Vesterland Holiday Park Sogndal

... doing nursing and teaching English. She was off to Greenland when I left her. Anyway I took the Flam train on the 5th and it was beautiful because you climbed the mountains and viewed all of Flam, passing through cloud and into the mountain, it was better than the oslo to bergen train and it lasted a very short hour. I am back in Oslo now to begin the next leg of my journey and am finally washing my clothes.
Bye!

... we had an empty wagon just for the four of us and we could walk freely in the aisle and move quickly among the windows and from side to side and take pictures whenever we wanted.

Wow! It was a marvellous train ride with beautiful views and gorgeous countryside. We could see plenty of waterfalls, grazing horses on the greenish pastures, we passed many tunnels and also the height we covered ...

... recommended walking path which might have ended close to the glacier, but the weather was so awful that after a 30-minute exhausting walk in endless drizzle we decided to get back to our car. And before we arrived we had been soaking wet and frozen hard apart from the fact that my mum was muttering all the way there and back.

Thanks god cars have heating systems nowadays :-)

Fortunately, it stopped raining, but the sun never came up so I was freezing. Again! Mainly on the little ferry which got us across the part of the fjord. We left our car in the picturesque village of Solvorn and stepped on the island with the UNESCO Urnes stave church on foot.

We started climbing uphill passing apple orchards and tiny farm houses. The church turned up to be quite far from the port. I think that it took us more than 30 minutes to get ...

... cabin´s porch as it was raining all the time we stayed there.

My mum was almost ecstatic when she found all the big and tasty mushrooms all around the cabin. Well, you should know that we - Czechs - are the biggest fans of picking mushrooms. So the first my mum cooked was a delicious mushroom ragout.

... hele dagen, begynte med regn, var opphold men lave skyer og tåke i Fjærland, mer regn tilbake i Lunde og Skei, og da jeg kom til Astruptunet regnet og blåste det hvite skumtopper på Jølstravannet, men innen jeg reiste derfra var det blitt sol og nesten blikk på vannet.
Stoppet for å spise 'lunsj' på veien mellom Haukedalsvatnet og Eldalsosen, og rakk så vidt få i meg tre br ...

... names of all the places we went, except Jostedal Glacier which I wrote about a couple days earlier and I remember we were also in the city of Flam. We talked about going to Bergen but didn't make it all the way.

There was hours of driving and breathtaking scenery, just waterfalls, lakes, and fjords seriously everywhere I looked, and it was green! I was completely in awe the entire time. I did a lot of ...

... but the Norwegians were still a seafaring people. The old wooden church that predated this Stave Church had rotten timber woods, so a group of highly skilled Norwegian craftsmen had to build a new church, in which the timber would not be in contact with the damp earth. Great wooden posts, or staves, were slotted into the ground frame and hauled upright to form the main structure. Surrounding this church was a sacred cemetery. However, it was ...

... which was a beautiful building situated right on the lake. We managed to cook ourselves here too which was a bonus. We met a couple of Canadians who were from Montreal and were holidaying in Norway for 3 months. Montreal must be rich. Anyway, it was a pleasant stay with beautiful views. The lake was crystal clear and still, and was a great place to relax for the evening and following morning. In the morning we headed to the train station for the final part of our journey to Bergen.

... with a steeper decline... Probably would've taken so much less time. Eventually found our car at about 21:00 before the two of us headed back to Flåm, completely exhausted. Don't think I've ever had as long and gruelling a hike as this one... 8 July 2006 - Saturday Decided to take Saturday pretty easy... Funny enough not waking up ...