Norway Part 2 - Flam>Dragsvik

Walking Around Balestrand Orchards

Day 3 started early as Austin and I boarded our first train of the day to go towards the mountain tops, snaking through farmlands and ascending into the small, foggy mountain towns. It was a quiet ride and we just relaxed and watched the beautiful country speed by, trying to soak in as much of it as we could. We stopped at some really cute train stations that were hardly a single little building.

At a rainy stop near the top called Myrdal, we changed from a comfortable train to the tourist train... And I don't mean this lightly. We read that this Flam Railway train ride was one of the must-do's in Norway and featured incredible sights of the cliff faces which dropped into the valley which the train plummeted down. We boarded the quaint green train and were welcomed inside by a Wes Anderson-looking scene. We grabbed some seats and we were off. The guides spoke of the history and the breath taking views that were typical on a sunnier, clearer day but unfortunately it was just fog for us. We stopped at a powerful, towering waterfall and were enjoying the fresh air and the sight when music started playing from somewhere, and a "gypsy ghost" in red came out from the ruins and started dancing... Austin and I looked at each other shaking our heads and thinking how this was so not our cup of tea. Oh well - it was still a means of transportation to Flam!

Waterfall... With Gypsy Ghost.

Flam was rainy and chilly and filled with people from a cruise ship that was in the harbor - and Flam is not a big town. Thankfully the unfavorable weather kept most groups of people in the ship, and we were able to avoid the crowds that made it ashore. We hiked up to a little restaurant and had one of the best meals of the trip - fresh salmon, local eggs and sausage and delicious beers. We walked around the little town and went inside the historic hotel before boarding our ferry to Balestrand.

The ferry to Balestrand was serene as we passed sleepy but colorful homes on the shoreline and saw tons of waterfalls dumping right into the fjord. We walked around Balestrand exploring the orchards and neighborhood before catching our bus to Dragsvik where our hotel was located.

Now, I have to mention here that this was the most happiest of accidents in our vacation. When we were planning our trip, we were super late to the game as mentioned in my first post, and so finding a place to stay between Flam, Balestrand and the nearby towns proved very difficult. As we didn't have a car, we had to figure out a place we could stay close enough by where we could take a bus or ferry - and Dragsvik was the last place with availability. That being said, this was by far our favorite hotel experience and we wish we could have stayed longer. The hotel staff were welcoming, the grounds were quite impressive, and the little peninsula was eerily vacant. It was lightly sprinkling when we arrived, but we walked around and down to the shoreline to explore anyway. To be honest, the rain fit the mood perfectly and we wouldn't have had it any other way. We had a humble dinner, which we picked up from the market in Balestrand, in our room where the view was incredible. We fell asleep that night with the window opened to the sounds and smells of the quiet rainy night.

Rain on the Fjord at Dragsvik Hotel