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Big Ben
Chunnel  
Colosseum
CN Tower
Eiffel Tower
Empire State
Golden Gate
Grand Canyon
Great Wall
Hoover Dam
Lng Twr Pisa
Mt. St. Michel
Mt Fuji
Niagara Falls
Pyramids
Parthenon
Petra
Statue Liberty
Stonehenge

See, they are impressive.  It's cool to see the snow capped mountains, a huge cliff wall, and rivers and lakes at the bottom.  The dramatic mountain scenery reminds me of parts of Yosemite and Queenstown, New Zealand.

You can see the fjords by bus, boat, or train. I find out that the Norway in a Nutshell package includes a combo bus, boat and train, and that the Society of International Railway Travelers ranked it one of the 20 Best Railway Experiences in the World. Never heard of this group or list before, but Hey, sounds like a Train Experience World Wonder to me. I sign up for the tour.

The snow-streaked hills make the Cairo deserts or Greek Island beaches seem so far away, even tho it's only been two months. 

Reminds me of Hoth. One of the towns we stop at is the highst point in Europe, or that's what I catch from the train loudspeaker anyway.  A bunch of skiers get on the train at that stop.

Myrdal
At 12:40, we arrive in Myrdal and jump of the train to catch the Flåm Railway down to Flåm.  (can you tell, I'm getting good practice typing the å with the little accent on this page.)  A bunch of tourists from Bergen doing the same Nutshell trip joins us.

So the whole train is packed with tourists from all over, including Minnesota couples visiting relatives, Japanese tour-packs, a few locals from Bergen, and random others (that's me). We're a very sociable bunch, bonding as we ooh and aah at the glipses of dramatic mountain views between the dark tunnels

Note: if you are trying to take photos, KEEP YOUR CAMERA OUT because by the time you get your camera out to take a photo of a dramatic waterfall, you're in a tunnel again!

Flåm
We get to Flåm for an hour lunch break at the overpriced tourist restaurants. I grab some yogurt and a banana from the mini-market and grab lunch by the dock where I meet a fisherdude.  Then we catch a two hour fjord cruise ride for some great views.   I meet up with a group from Bergen taking a work trip to the Fjords.

I talk to some Bergen natives.  The guy Knut on the far right says it's his first time to the fjords, even though he's from Bergen, just a few hours train away.  Guess it's like that in any city - natives forget to do the tourist stuff.

Gudvangen
We arrive at Gudvangen, and take a very scary bus ride up a very steep switchback road to a hotel for another photo opp (the photo at the top of this page).  Seriously, if our septagenarian bus driver had a heart attack, well, it would be definitely add some adrenaline to the adventure.  

On the bus, I meet up with Anette, who does some IT work in Stockholm, but is half-Norwegian, and is in town for the Bergen International Music Fest.  Anette gives me the scoop on Scandalife, and we talk about the universal problem of filtering out junk spam.  Tough when 6 in Swedish is spelled "sex."  Then we continue on the hour bus ride to Voss.

Voss.  I'm sure it's a nice town, but we only get to see the train station as we have to wait an hour for the train to Bergen.

Train ride from Voss to Bergen with Anette.  Did you catch it- Everything in this photo is red and black, which I thought was pretty cool.

Food.  At the train station, Anette introduces me to a snack, which is like a mini pita-bread and cinnamon-butter sandwich.  It's apparently a tradition more in the west part of Norway, near Bergen.

We catch the train, arriving in Bergen by 8:30 pm.  A nice little 12-hour trip with spectacular views.  (It's a shorter trip from Bergen).  Now I know what all the fjord hype is about.  Heck, now I know what a fjord really is, and looks like.  Definitely recommended. 

Here's what we see in Bergen.

Check out the perfect reflections of this lake house.

More snow streaked hills on the Oslo-Bergen route.

On the Flåm Railway down to Flåm, I meet this nice couple.  Harriett's from where I used to live in Federal Way near Seattle.  He's from Montana.

On the ride from Myrdal down to Flam, the train stops here so all the tourists can run out to take photos of this very rough, spraying fall.  There's even a lady on the rocks singing some opera-style song, so we applaude her.  Then the conductor blows a whistle, and like kids being called in from the playground after recess, we all race back into the train.

View from the back of our boat

Eating lunch at the Flåm dock, I meet up with Ronny.  He's from Winter Olympics town Lillehammer, which is cool.  He's down in Flåm visiting his girlfriend. But she's taking advantage of the blue-sky weather to do some gardening.  So he goes fishing.  They don't bite in nice weather, he tells me about life in Lillehammer since the Olympics.  The tourists keep coming, which is good.

Oh the people you meet:  On the two hour fjord ride, I meet a Japanese tourist and Harrah's casino dice pit boss.  With her sun protection bandit outfit, I think she looks shadier.  After I take this photo, I show it to her and her friends, and she doesn't even recognize herself until her friends points her out.  Then she gets so embarrassed, she covers her mouth and runs away. Guess that's a Japanese  thing.  Oops.  Don't worry.  Later she comes back and we joke about it.