Monday 4th March, Flam.....

Sunday 4th March, Bergen to Flam.

Early start to the Railway Station in Bergen - train, tram and omnibus trip today!
Very nice morning, and the train was positively bulging with youngsters en route to the ski fields for a day's skiing.  Great scenery some of the time, but there are very long tunnels en route to Voss, which was the point at which we disembarked the train, and pushed our way onto a bus for the next leg of the trip.  Once again, great scenery, mountains, snow, ice, water.......

Finally, off the bus, and onto a ship for a two-hour trip down one of Norway's longest fjords.  Truly lovely scenery, and mostly a very nice day.  We were even able to stay outside for almost the entire trip, which was a nice change.  Much of the fjord was frozen in patches in the early stages of the journey, and the boat just crashed through, sending large shards of ice in all directions.  
Tiny villages clinging to life along the fjords - what on earth do they DO there????   Cannot imagine...  They can't all be holiday shacks, surely.....

At the very end of the fjord we reached the tiny settlement of Flam.  It appeared to be deserted, and indeed almost was!!!  It's still the Winter season here, and there is really no reason to visit, so most of the shops are indeed closed, and the only restaurant, attached (but not physically) to the hotel thankfully, was serving dinner - to be FINISHED by 6pm.....  Okay.

Very comfortable room, corner balcony, and great views to left and right.   To the centre, the view is of thousands of logs, cut and ready to be shipped out - somewhere!!!

Anyway, late afternoon, I went down to get a jug of ice and some glasses - we had a small amount of white wine left in our Hardy's wine cask, which we had bought in Finland!!!  So, having put the wine cask OUTSIDE to chill (there being no fridge in the room), and the jug of ice cubes outside also, we had a couple of glasses of wine pre-dinner, and very nice it was..  Having not been in the habit of imbibing wine from a cask for years, we have been very pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to drink - perhaps that's because there's not much choice, not sure!

Anyway, we were ushered into the dining room, on our arrival at the restaurant, to find a total of TWO other guests there!!!  (There was a casual cafe type thingo, but we had the 'package' of dinner and breakfast, so ate in the proper dining room!)

They took one look at Arthur's "Quark Expeditions" jacket he had flung over the chair, and proceeded to talk about their adventure with Quark too.   Small world eh?   Anyway, they're two travellers from Oz, Melbourne even, and even more oddly, Hawthorn.  6 degrees of separation?

We had originally been sat at separate tables, but we soon changed that, and the four of us had a lovely dinner (brilliant food), and a good chat, and were 'home' in our rooms by about 6.30pm.   Had a read for a couple of hours, and then fell into a coma.   Slept for about 12 hours - fantastic!!!

Monday 5th March,  Flam

Same couple for breakfast, and they are on their way in the opposite direction, to go on the Cruise Ship up north, to SEE THE NORTHERN LIGHTS.  We wish them luck in their endeavours.

Did I ever tell you that we never saw even a glimpse of the damned Northern Lights?????  Bugger..
They are going on our list of "never gunna see 'em" with the Moose!

Went for a long walk in the middle of the day, very pleasant, warm even in our heavy jackets, and there was no wind.  Came back to our room to do the necessary 'clerical' bits and pieces, and having finally downloaded the Age online, had a little read of the news.  Have missed that..  We did buy a 3 or 4 day old English newspaper in Bergen one day, we were so desperate to read a paper!!!  It takes about 24 hours to well and truly get over watching the endless repeats of snippets on the BBC.  
And MY GOD, the Queen has a tummy bug!!!!!!

Forgot to mention also, that when in Bergen, at a restaurant, we were offered two dishes of Horse...  One was as Lasagne, and the other was sirloin.  One of our number braved the sirloin, and said it was very nice, I was unable to bring myself to eat it on that occasion, but if I'm offered on another occasion before we leave Norway, I might have a taste!

Okay, it's 4.15pm, not long now until Dinner, so just time for a drink and a freshen up.  We leave here at 9am tomorrow (Tuesday) for Oslo,  the first leg is a pretty cute train ride apparently.