July 21 Flam Norway

You sail into Flam through a long narrow fjord.  Everywhere you look it's breathtakingly beautiful.  Waterfalls and cataracts abound.  Tiny little towns are scattered throughout, and even some individual homes, and you wonder how they ever communicate with the rest of the world since they're built on the side of a sheer rock wall.

But for picture taking, they all look alike after awhile.  I've tried to pick the best of what we saw and put some variety in this, but around each corner there was another sight just like, yet different.

It was grey and overcast, with an intermittent cloud layer at about 500 feet.

 This was a tender port.  There is one dock in Flam, but the 3000 passenger MSC ship was there.

 We boarded the Flam railway. From the guidebook: "The Flåm Railway is only 12.5 miles long, but a true masterpiece of engineering. Its exhilarating route traverses the narrow, steep valley, climbing from sea level to more than 2,800 feet while crossing back and forth across rivers, and through 20 tunnels. In order to afford you the best possible views of the magnificent scenery, the train will
proceed slowly."

 There is a bike/hiking path that follows the same route as the train.  How they can look so happy while riding up such a steep grade amazes me.

 The train engine is very modern, all electric.  The cars are more vintage.

 The fog was descending but in this picture you can see the hiking/biking trail which takes a more direct (although still serpentine) path than the train tracks.

 The train stops at this waterfall for about 5 minutes.  There's a brief dance recital that breaks out, with mythical creatures dancing to mystical music.  IMHO, the women who do the dancing have the most boring job in show business.  They dance for less than 1 minute, 4 times an hour, for 8 hours.  The weather was cool and of course it's very misty/wet on the platforms by the water.  But then, they may be telemarketing between trains.

 No explanation

 In order to sell an excursion as more than just a train trip up and back, we exited one stop from the turn-around point and had coffee and waffles at this hotel.

 Outbuilding with sod shingles

 Just around the corner to the right is a large lake that's feeding this river and keeping the mythical dancers employed.

 The train returns to pick us up.  It runs all year long, so it's got a snow plow

 We returned to Flam and boarded the tender to go back to the ship.  Onboard was the ship's navigator who had borrowed a ship's bike and ridden up the hills for a couple of hours.  He was muddy and sweaty, yet when we got back aboard, dropped our stuff in the room and got up to the buffet, he was already there, showered and in his uniform whites.  Impressive speed, both biking and cleaning up.

 Return to Nautica

The sun came out later in the evening as we were going back out the fjord.