The plan for the next part of our journey was to catch the train from Oslo to Bergen with a 2 night stop at Flåm. This was all carefully planned in advance as most of our trip is but it ended up being one of our biggest stuff ups. On our flight to Tromso I realised that we hadn’t actually booked our seats for the train for Oslo to Bergen. So we look online (luckily all Norwegian flights have free Wifi on board) and see that the train has completely sold out! It is a Saturday and this railway is part of the Norway in a nutshell tour which is popular on Weekends. We couldn’t really change our plans as the hotel had been booked at Flåm so we needed to get there. So we look at all options including renting a car, different train options and at this stage we are panicking. We eventually find out that we can catch a bus, with only about an hour extra travel time. So we book it and the train leg to get us to Bergen for Christmas.
The day comes and we set out to the bus station in Oslo and it is packed, I didn’t think the bus would be this popular. We find our bus, the driver doesn’t speak English that well but we don’t think it will be an issue. He scans our tickets and we get under way. The countryside was spectacular, a complete winter wonderland, snow everywhere and the trip even included a stop for lunch.
Our bus trip needed a change of bus at a small town called Laerdal, and so we get off at what we think is the right stop. We can see our next bus waiting but as we are pulling up the bus suddenly pulls out and leaves. We get off and panic starts to set in, I run up to the corner to have a look and the bus is gone. We ask the bus driver and he looks at our ticket again and tries to tell us in broken english that we should have got off earlier and that we should have told him. He tries to ring the other bus to come back but then after a minute or so says he has to keep going.
We are not entirely sure what to do, I start looking up Google maps for some sort of miracle to appear but there are no more buses today, it is 4pm and almost dark. We head to a Cafe that is still open and ask there, luckily the owner can speak some english and calls the local taxi for us. It is a small miracle but the taxi is available to take us. The only thing is it would cost 1500 NOK or about $250. We decide there are no other options and take the taxi to our hotel in Flåm.
Flåm is a beautiful little town on the end of a fjord with mountains rising up from each side. We have 2 nights and 1 day here, just long enough to do a fjord cruise and check out the Stegastein viewpoint. This place is really just designed for tourists, there is one small supermarket, a couple of restaurants, a handful of souvenir shops and a cafe. We enjoyed our stay in Flåm, it is very pretty but we were just relieved that we were able to get our holidays back on track.
The next day we leave for Bergen via the Flåm railway, this is a spectacular ride up through the mountains to a place called Myrdal. This is where we catch the train to Bergen for Christmas and our last stop in Norway.
