Bergen is 500 kms from Oslo so we are going to take two days. There's something about being in a bus: I'm asleep before we leave Oslo but wake when the mountains get higher and the trees thicker until we are so high that the trees disappear altogether and there is snow on the mountaintops. We make several stops for the keen photographers and for Merryle to pick wildflowers including wild delphiniums.
Lunch is at a folk museum where we are served poached and smoked salmon and chocolate cake with "wiped" cream.
After another snooze we wake as the bus stops for a most peculiar edifice in the middle of nowhere - a stave church, so-called because big posts or staves were driven into the ground and the spaces between filled in. /Photo 2. There are only 28 of these left in Norway and this one is the best as 95% of its interior is original: the exterior has had tiles replaced and been tarred to preserve it. It looks quite extraordinary, like something out of The Hobbit and was built in 1108. Imagine that! We have a young man to tell us about it: it has been restored to original lack of furnishings inside and is quite small in spite if it's height - everyone stood up. / Photo 3.
There's still more excitement before we arrive at Flam (a small o over the a and pronounced Flom.) Next is a 25 km tunnel under a mountain, the longest tunnel I'm the world. It's the longest 19 minutes we've experienced in spite of the strange blue rooms every 5 km which have been put in to break the monotony. / Photo 4. People go there to get married - how weird.
Our hotel at Flam is a ski lodge in the winter and full of all nationalities.
No comments:
Post a Comment