Norway: Fjord Cruise

Today's post is going to be picture intensive--we are in Norway after all! 

Originally, we thought we'd want to spend a whole day doing Norway in a Nutshell tour which involved a train ride and a boat ride and a bus ride and a couple more train rides to see the fjords and picturesque views. But just on the day of our departure for Norway I read more reviews of this itinerary and we decided that we'd stay more flexible and save a lot of money by renting a car for the day and doing our own fjord viewing.

So that is what we did. We rented a car from the center of Bergen and headed inland towards  Gudvangen. The roads were pristine, the scenery breath taking. 

In about two hours we arrived to Gudvangen's boat port--this sleepy place in the middle of the mountains. 

Katya thought this was the boat we'd be taking. 

We had reserved tickets for the cruise (boat ride) to Flam but we had to wait for the boat for a few minutes. 

We were happy to discover that maybe twenty-twenty five people were on the boat all together. That's the beauty of traveling a bit off season and later in the day AND in the opposite direction from the most popular route which is Flam-Gudvangen. 

We could stay outside or inside on the boat. We left our backpacks inside, ate our sandwiches bought in Bergen before we left and had the whole corner with a table to ourselves. Outside was not sunny at the beginning but not windy any more at all. 

The views were simply stunning. 

Another one of Katya?

This is one of many attempts to take a picture of all three kids together. Seriously....Mark...

A little better here.

Robert trying to get a picture with the kids, then notices that Alex is chewing on something (when is Alex NOT chewing on something?).

All kids took turns with the camera so I had a million shots of the mountains and close ups of eyes, gloves, feet, etc. 

This is Mark saying he'd take a picture of us through the rail window. 

And this is Mark sneaking up on Alex from behind trying to take as many pictures as he could (I deleted at least forty pictures of this hat) before Alex would notice that Mark was there. 

The boat ride was two hours. This is the way through Nærøyfjord. 

This fjord is part of Sognefjord that is 204 km long. 

In some parts it's only 500 meters wide (1600 ft).

The sun came out finally and the weather turned glorious!

The kids loved this boat ride, and so did we. Very relaxing and beautiful! We were just lucky that it was not busy and we had the boat all to ourselves, basically, and that the weather cooperated (although the temps were in the 50s). 

Finally approaching Flam, a village along the fjord and a famous cruise port which is hard to believe. 

This is where we got off to catch a bus back to Gudvangen since that's where our car was left. The ride was only twenty minutes through two very long tunnels of over 10 km. 

But we were not finished for the day.