More Postcards from Norway

Bergen reminds me of The Rockies and St. John’s all rolled into one. While the terrain is very similar to Banff, albeit with shorter mountains, the weather is just like St. John’s: windy and wet! Also, the town is much older. The region of Bryggen, above, is UNESCO World Heritage site. In fact, the town is so much like St. John’s, I found it hard to shoot because it felt so familiar.

Trish joined me on an early morning ramble and I caught our shadows looking back at us on the steps in front of a church.




In a challenge to myself, I tried to capture both this church and Trish, with a bit of off camera lighting magic. She is at the bottom just off to the right of center.




I think my best capture of the morning was this shot of white tires on a wharf next to Peppes Pizza.




Since we only half a few days, we crammed in as much as possible, taking a “Norway in a Nutshell” excursion. The trip started by train to the town of Voss where we transferred to a bus, which took us to the town of Gudvangen. From there we took a ferry to Flaam. The fjords are steep and narrow so that large ships are able to travel up to the many towns scattered along them.




Steep cliffs along the fjords with lots of rain water run off makes for many water falls.




The weather was miserable. Lots of wind and rain, so we spent most of the ferry ride inside looking out.




At Flaam, we stopped for lunch and wandered around before we took our train to Myrdal. We ran into a bunch of Norwegians. Angie took a shine to the horny one while Trish gave the other a nose job.




From Flaam we took a special train up and over the mountains to Myrdal. We ran into two fellow Canadians with whom we shared a lovely antique coach. It had wooden paneling, something you don't see on today's modern coaches.




Myrdal is at an elevation of 867 m and the rain below fell as wet snow at this altitude.




Most of our other travelers were travel agents on an education journey and it looked like most of them had never seen snow before, as impromptu snowball fights broke out everywhere.




From Myrdal, we transferred to another train that returned us to Bergen. For a slide show of photos from our stay in Bergen, click here.