Norway in a Nutshell…Bergen to Oslo

 We decided to do Norway’s most popular tour called Norway in a Nutshell which is a self guided tour that took us from Bergen to Oslo over two days…

The first day saw us leaving Bergen by train for a one hour ride to a town called Voss…

We passed by lots of little farms…

Also many fish farms as Norway is the largest exporter of salmon in the world and we saw farms everywhere we went…

And then into Voss, a cute little town with a huge lake in the middle, it is a very popular town for skiing and extreme sports…

A church near the rail station in Voss…

From there we took a public bus that took us further into the mountains and the scenery was stunning…

Lots of big rivers…

The first of many huge waterfalls we saw on this trip…

 Lots of sheep grazing on green fields…

And green river valleys…

The bus took us up to a viewpoint so we could see the deep valley below…

We then arrived at the beginning of our fjord trip which is described by the tour’s literature…

The Nærøyfjord is the narrowest and best-known of the many arms of the Sognefjord. Surrounded by towering mountains up to 1,700 meters high, this arm of the Sognefjord is amazingly beautiful. With its steep mountainsides, hanging valleys, towering peaks, waterfalls, and small hamlets, this fjord is perhaps the most outstanding natural attraction in Norway. The Nærøyfjord is 20 km long, only 250 meters across at its narrowest and a mere 12 meters at its shallowest. The surrounding mountains reach heights of 1,660 meters.

Here are some of the photos from that section of the tour…

I have never seen so many waterfalls…

We then turned into another fjord which was much greener…

It took us to the small town of Flam where there were small villages along the way…

Some of these villages have been there for centuries, been abandoned and then renewed with summer homes and guest houses and can only be reached by boat…

This boat belongs to an American who returned to his wife’s families abandoned farm and restored it and now it has become an exclusive destination…

We arrived in Flåm to spend the night at a great hostel…

Our hostel is the yellow building…

This was the river running through town…

The next morning started with another train trip, this one an historic journey…

Flåmsbana or Flåm Railway is a spectacular train journey that offers a panoramic view of some of the wildest and most magnificent nature in the Norwegian fjord landscape. The 20 km-long train ride took 20 years to build and is one of the steepest standard gauge railway lines in the world. On the train ride that operates between Myrdal and Flåm, you can see rivers cutting through deep ravines, waterfalls cascading down the side of steep, snow-capped mountains, and mountain farms clinging dizzily to sheer slopes. 

Quite nice inside with wooden accents…

This was another beautiful train trip through spectacular scene and then we waited for the Bergen railway which would take us 500km into Oslo. We were now high in the mountains with lots of snow…

And as we went down toward Oslo the sun was shining and we left the snow behind…

This was a great way to see some of the natural beauty of Western Norway and I would highly recommend it as a part of a Norway trip.I didn’t have a lot of descriptions as the photos speak for themselves. We did it over two days but others took longer depending on how long you would want to stay at each place, but we were anxious to get to our last stop in Norway which is the capital city, Oslo.