Dear Mom, thanks for the boots

It`s cold. Seriously cold. Last night, as we were walking home from the internet cafe, I felt one little plop of rain on my head. It didn`t start in earnest until after we got back (that would be after getting a tad confused on the umpteen billion switchbacks up to our place and declining the invitation to "party" with some college students - I know, what an old fogey thing to do, but we were sooooooo tired, and we still had to pack and get up early (pre-seven for me!) Anyway, the rain hasn`t stopped since. It`s kind of a Seattle rain, only it`s cold. And by cold, I mean C-O-L-D. Numb your fingertips cold.

Today, we did the first half of Norway in a Nutshell. That`s a train, bus, boat, train trip from Bergen to Oslo. You only get to see two little fjords out of the kabajillions in Norway, but they`re renowned as the best. Our train left at 8:40 and we had to get our Eurail Passes validated, thus the early start. On the way, it rained. Brrrrrrr. And, Chris broke his water bottle. It was one of my Life is Good, Nalgene water bottles. If anyone could break something so indestructible, it`s my bull-in-a-china closet huband. We could only laugh. The girl at the train office (yes, they were open) was unsure of what to do with us. I don`t  think many people use Bergen as a starting point. But, she was totally helpful and got us going.

We took the train to a small town called Voss. Unfortunately, it rained the whole time and we couldn`t get very many good pictures out the window. Had it been summer and warm, I would have rolled down the window and shot out of it. As I`ve mentioned, though it`s most certainly not summer and in no way warm, so we just sat back and enjoyed. Upon arrival in Voss, we were immediately ushered onto a bus. I only had time for one (or two) pictures!

The bus ride to Gudvangen was unbelievable! Seriously gorgeous scenery. I now know why nothing is open until May 1. There were feet of snow everywhere! In fact, we saw a bunch of people on their way to go skiing. I can`t really put into words how awesome it was. We stopped at a mountaintop resort (that`s closed still) for pictures. I think it was called Stalheim. Holy wow! It was even better than the bus ride! The views of the beginning of the fjord and the mountain were just unbelieveable.

The bus dropped us off at Gudvangen, which seemed like more of a boat stop with a few places to stay than a town. We walked around taking a few pictures. Now, we were actually on a fjord. I`ve been dreaming of this for I don`t know how long.

We snapped a few and boarded the boat, afraid we might miss it. All of a sudden, we were innundated by a large tour group (I`ll let you guess at the nationality). We tried to ignore them, but it quickly became painfully obvious that it would be a difficult task. No matter, we were about to tour around not one, but two fjords! Take the train ride and the bus ride, put them together and mulitply by like 50 kabajillion, and you don`t even begin to get to the awesomeness of the boat ride. It was truly surreal for me. I`d been dreaming and planning and thinking about doing this for so long, the fact that we were actually there doing it, seeing it was overwhelming.

Even though it was quite literally freezing and raining, and yes, snowing, Chris and I stayed outside for the whole ride (expect to grab hot dogs, beer, & Fanta and wolf them down...we were starving! nothing is open in this country on Sunday morning!). We were among a very few. The tour group started out inside (many with their backs to the windows - we didnt`t get it), came outside to feed the seagulls and take pictures of them, took a few pics of the fjord and proceed back inside. I can`t be happier that we stayed out. We saw some absolutely amazing scenery, and hopefully got some fabulous pictures. I could go on and on about how wonderful it was!

Now, we are in Flåm. We are going to take a walk here in the countryside and then take either the bus or the boat to Åurland where we are staying tonight. This is seriously cool. Seriously.l

Oh, and did I mention it`s cold?