Aurland

So, I never got a chance to talk about the rest of our time on the Fjords. I have a list of things I want to do and see in my life. On it were Oktoberfest in Munich, check, Cinque Terre in Italy, check, the Fjords of Norway, check, Macchu Picchu, Red Square, and numerous other things. The Fjords are the whole reason we went to Norway. To fulfill my dream. I`ve wanted to see them since I was a kid. And was not disappointed. I think I mentioned that I wanted to do more, but couldn`t becuase it wasn`t May 1st yet. What we did was truly wonderful. More than once, we said, "Wow! This is so surreal."

I talked about the bus ride and the boat ride and that we were in Flåm. I can see why Rick says not to stay in Flåm. There is nothing. Some touristy restaurants (where we had fish and chips and cherry, marzipan cake), some touristy shops, a market, and a couple of touristy places to stay. All in all, we`re talking about maybe 15 buildings down by the water. Maybe. And that includes the train station. If you walk back up the river about 1 km, there`s what might be referred to as a town, but it looked to have max. 30 buildings. So, after walking around a bit, we decided to head over to Aurland.

The bus didn`t leave for hours, but the boat did leave to head back to where we came from. We talked to the guys running it, and they totally understood why we wanted to get out of Flåm. Cracked us up. Since we`d told them previously we were going to Aurland, they were all too happy to have us back on, and even let us on for free. It was the coolest experience. They pulled right up with the front of the boat facing the dock, and we walked a little gangplank down to the dock. We were the only ones getting off. I was alittle nervous what with the big pack on my back, but it was fine.

The town is small and deserted, as it`s not May 1st yet, but it was glorious. Right on the water, with the mountains behind. We had an awesome view from our window. It`s quite possible that we were the only people in the hotell! We walked around for a while taking tons of pictures and loving the fact that we got to enjoy more time on the fjords.

We were also exhausted. So, at like 5:00 on the dot, we headed for dinner. We went to the hotel`s pub. We were the only people in there, so we watched Isdans with the worker (we`re still debating if it was a he or she...I say he). It`s Dancing With the Stars, only for Ice Dancing. We totally got into it! For dinner, we had cheeseburgers. They were actually cheeseless and had Thousand Island dressing, lettuce, cucumber, and tomatoes on them. And they were quite possibly the worst cheeseburgers one earth. Thank goodness for the fries. I ate all of those. And they were good! Seriously, I didn`t know you could do such bad things to meat.

After dinner, we went to the convenience store next door and picked up chocolate for dessert. We talked for a bit with the gal working in there. She`s married to and Englishman. We talked about how dead the town was and how busy it gets in summer. We were glad we were there now. But, she said she`s always glad to see the first tourist because that means the warmer weather is coming soon. We talked about the beautiful train ride we`d be taking tomorrow and how the Japanese tourists go from side to side in the "carriage" taking pictures of everything. I found a little too much familiarity in that statement!!

We went back to the room and found the Discovery Channel on our tv. So, there we sat, watching Mike Rowe and Dirty Jobs. We love that show. His dry humor cracks us up. And I promptly fell asleep. At like 6:30 in the evening (or so). And then I woke up....at 2:30. And couldn`t go back to sleep....I`d already had 8 hours of sleep! Finally, after another 3 hours, I did, and we got up at a normal time.

We had to take the bus back to Flåm to cach the special railway. We were unsure of the bus schedule, but showed up when we thought it was coming, and eventually it did. We sat in the very front of the bus. We shouldn`t have. It felt like we were going to go off the little road skirting the mountain and water. When noone was coming, we drove down the middle of the road, and it truly looked like no other vehicles would fit. But they did. Oh my, they did.

We arrived unscathed and had a bit of time to walk around Flåm. Still unexciting. But the scenery was glorious. I didn`t want to leave. The weather was great and the views awesome. I kept taking picture after picture in hopes of remembering some of the grandness of it all.

We took the special little cog railway from Flåm to Myrdal. Wow!! Wow!! Wow!! The grand views were out of this world. I don`t know what else to say. It was a sight to behold. In Myrdal, we boarded the train for Oslo. We spent the next 5 hours being treated to even more amazing scenery. For the first few hours, it was all white. Houses were still buried in the snow. There was even one train station that was built into the tunnel, I guess because of the snow, and the snow was coming inside of the tunnel. Again, surreal. There were skiing resorts and never-ending mountain lakes with brightly painted houses reflecting in the water and rocky little islands with trees stories and stories tall. And more waterfalls than you could ever count.  I`ve never seen anything like it. I am so glad we broke the trip up. We were really able to enjoy everything. Well, I was. you-know-who slept. And then we were in Oslo. I`ve already shared that story. Let`s not rehash that.