Bergen

Bergen is on the west coast of Norway. This is the only place we stayed where we didn't know anyone. We stayed in a hotel near Bryggen, a series of distinctive commercial buildings with roots going back to the Hanseatic League in the 14th century:

From Bergen we took a Norway in a Nutshell tour. We took a train, bus, boat, and then two more trains back to Bergen. The boat went from Gudvangen to Flåm on two branches of the Sognefjord quite far inland from the coast. The fjord was spectacular, with snow above about 500 meters:

Notice the following in the photo below: the steep slopes into the water; the agricultural use of land wherever possible; the gray sheds at the water's edge; the white house up high; and the sheer waterfall. We saw lots of waterfalls.

From Flåm we took the Flåm Railway, a popular tourist train, to Myrdal (elevation 866 meters) where we changed to a commercial train back to Bergen. The Flåm Railway is the third steepest adhesion railway in the world. Before reaching Myrdal the train stopped at the Kjosfossen Waterfall (in the background in the photo below) where there was snow. Alas, the Huldra only come out in the summer and so we did not see them.

On the day after the fjord tour we took the commercial train from Bergen over the mountains to Drammen, near Oslo. This took most of the day. We were in the last car, and in the photo below you can see the rest of the train ahead of us:

This train line is the highest mainline railway in northern Europe, reaching an elevation of 1,237 meters (4,058 feet). We had sunny skies and plenty of snow. Cabins were popular in the mountains:

Tunnels are ubiquitous in Norway, for both railways and roads. The Flåm Railway goes through 20 tunnels in 20 kilometers, and there were also plenty of tunnels on the train ride from Bergen to Drammen.

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