Our first stop was a very small place called Flam. Flam is known for just a couple of things. One is the Flam railway which is an hour trip down to the town. It is one of the steepest and most scenic railways in the world. It even stops part way down for 5 minutes at a waterfall so you can get off and take photos. While we were doing so some music started playing and a couple of women in orange dresses came out of a hut and started dancing. Was completely unexpected.

We had unfortunately left it too late as far as our accommodation was concerned and ended up having to stay in a 4 star hotel for $150 a night each. Wasn't exactly making Norway any cheaper for ourselves. The place wasn't even that amazing although the location was terrific. What did make Norway slightly cheaper were the disposable grills. You could buy these one-time use grills which came with charcoal for really cheap and then fry up some sausages or whatever (we also fried up some corn cobs). All you needed was a lighter. The hotel was also right next door to a microbrewery/pub with a Viking theme which we only spent a short amount of time at (enough just to get a taster tray of their 5 beers).

During the one day that we had in Flam we took what they called a Fjord Safari which was a two hour speedboat trip out into a couple of the Fjords. We had to get dressed in big overalls with a life jacket, gloves, hat and goggles because when the boat got to the top speed it got bloody cold. It was good fun though, but in hindsight we didn't really see a whole lot more than what we ended up seeing in the next ferry ride we took anyway. That ferry ride was from Flam to Balestrand where we were staying in a cabin in a campground for a couple of nights.

Balestrand was really the highlight of Norway. A relatively large town (as far as towns on the Fjords go) with an amazing view. We were staying in a cabin in a campground which a great little patio out front with the some chairs offering a great view of the Fjord. A great place to just sit and chill out with a couple of brews. I also tried some Norwegian brown cheese while here. A very interesting taste, really quite sweet. Doesn't actually taste much like cheese really. There was also a cafe claiming to have the best cake in the world. Big claim. I haven't tried every cake in the world so I can't verify. At most I can say it was the best cake I've had in Norway, perhaps in Europe. I could even go as far to say it would be in great contention as the best cake I've ever had. So really, I can't yet refute their claim.

On our one full day in Balestrand we went hiking in the hills. The weather was absolutely perfect, or it wouldn't have been if it was perhaps a bit cooler. But it was really the type of weather I was really hoping to have when we went up the hills to get some great views over the Fjords. The previous day had been very overcast and cloudy and just wouldn't have great done them justice I don't think. So we were lucky to have amazing weather for our photos. The hike took about 4 hours overall and wasn't overly challenging, so it was all uphill one way and all downhill the other. I'm honestly not sure which is worse. Downhill gets really annoying when it's continuous for long stretches of time. Norway sure was expensive, but it was worth it just to get these views. The Fjords really are the reason to visit Norway and you really have to hike up to get these kinda views of them.

Our last stop was Bergen. We caught a 4 hour ferry to get there. Not really much to write about here, didn't exactly do much. Just spent one afternoon wandering around. There are some pretty cool little striped buildings with narrow alleys along the harbour. And we visited a fortress, though as far as forts go it wasn't all that impressive. All in all, this was really just the endpoint of an amazing trip through the fjords (though oddly enough the place is called "the gateway to the fjords", I guess we just went backwards). From here I had a 7 hour train ride back to Oslo from where I would then fly to Berlin.