We had planned to spend a few hours in Oslo before heading to the West Coast, but a few things were unsure with the hostel and the trains times weren't what we expected, so log story short, we had to leave Oslo about 2 hours after we arrived on the night train. We ended up paying like $3 just to use the bathroom, but at least we got to change and brush our teeth, etc.
Once we boarded the train across Norway for our 5.5 hour journey we were not too excited since we had just been on a train alllll night, but it turned out to be amazing. The rail line was so scenic, and we kept seeing snow on the mountains, which was cool, and finally we got to such a high elevation that there was basically snow everywhere and the river was frozen over... basically Antartica haha. Everyone hopped off the train to take pictures and then got back on 3 minutes later, so fun.
Yes, this is June in Norway...In Myrdal, we switched to another train, the Flamsbana Railway, which is a scenic railway that drops from the mountains down in to the valley where the tiny town of Flam is. A lot of the trains and roads go through tunnels to get down/around the mountains, so this train line is apparently an engineering feat because we had great views the whole way down. It took them 4 years to build 20 km. It was really neat and we stopped at this huge waterfall - there were waterfalls all over the place because of the snow melting I guess, or maybe they are just always there.
We finally got to Flam, which is this tiny village, and stayed at a nice hostel there, and took some awesome pictures on the edge of the fjord, which is basically mountains rising straight out of a river-lake type deal. Anyway, we hiked a bit then next morning and then took a ferry through the fjord to another town - it was so awesome, the scenery was like nothing else I've ever seen before, it was like the great valley or whatever it's called in The Land Before Time haha thats all I can think to liken it to - or maybe like Tarzan haha. The best part was, although Flam is tiny and hardly anyone spends the night there, alllll the day tripper tour groups come through to take the ferry, etc. so the line was so long for the ferry and we didn't even think we would get on... until we found out that if it filled up they would just call another one! So we let all these people pass us and get on the super crowded ferry, and then got on another ferry with like 20 people and had a basically empty boat. So we got a ton of great pictures, and the fjords were basically totally awesome. When we got off the ferry, we took a bus ride back to the train line that also turned out to be very scenic, which was a nice surprise!
Fjord-side in Flam
Flam from above during our hike
Fjord cruise - awesome!
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