Viking Shores and Fjords Cruise: We now start the Shores and Fjords portion of our trip. We will head out of Bergen for 7 days and eventually end up back in Amsterdam for our flight home.
Day One and Two - after spending one more day in Bergen and getting a lot of new neighbors we head out to Flam. It is a beautiful trip up the fjords to Flam - I saw many snow covered peaks and waterfalls. For our only day in Flam, we took the Flam train up into the mountains with views that cannot be beaten. This 20 km long train ride is one of the steepest standard gauge railway lines in the world. We were a little early in the season so we got more of a winter view instead of the summer green but was a beautiful way to spend the day.
Day Three - Stavanger, Norway. This port is on the southern tip of Norway and is one of its oldest towns. It has cobblestone streets and some of the best kept 17th and 18th century wooden houses. It is also one of the oil and gas boom towns in recent times. We later took a boat ride on a RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) to see the fjords. The weather was perfect and they gave us quite a thrill ride with quick turns and a close up view of a waterfall.
Day Four - We headed out to Kristiansand which was named after King Kristian and was built on top of large sand dunes. In the picture below you can see an attachment to the window frame which has two mirrors on the inside that point down either side of the street. The occupants could then sit in their house and watch what is going on both sides of their street - these were called gossip mirrors. We then went to an outdoor museum which had some old time homes that date to around 1300 AD. This third house is built on stilts and is used as food storage and are attempting to keep out the mice.
Day Five - We headed to Oslo, Norway with a full day excursion around town.
We first head over to Vigeland Park which was property donated to the artist Gustav Vigeland under the agreement that he would be responsible for all the art work and set up a public park. As with most pictures they do not do this place justice. The sculpture park is Vigeland's life work, comprising over 200 sculptures in granite, bronze, and wrought iron.
Church at museum
Viking boat at museum
Ski Jump
Oslo Oprea House
Day Six - We headed down to Skagen, Denmark. This is located at the north end of Denmark and is a lovely town. This a small town of around 3,000 full-time residents. It is a large tourist attraction in the summer because of the nice beaches and its large harbor. It is a fishing community with a long history. One interesting fact: during WWII the Germans placed a lot of mines out in the ocean and for many years fishing boats would run into these mines with the obvious consequences.
Day Seven and Eight - We had a full day and night at sea and the next morning arrived in Amsterdam for a morning flight home. We got to the airport at 8:00 and it took about 5 hours for check-in and security checks. Unfortunately, it was a national holiday in the Netherlands. Many airport workers went on strike. The lines for both of these procedures were crazy. We were lucky that our plane was having some electrical issues getting to Amsterdam so it was about 2 hours delayed. If that flight had not been delayed we would have missed that flight. We were then 2 hours late getting in to Houston so we almost missed the next flight to Albuquerque. A very stressful day.
We had a great time over these 23 days and am ready to start the next one.
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