Norway Day 1 - Bergen, Voss and fjords

Added: September 06, 2008

Tags: Norway city fjord mountains photos

Note: I am more than one month behind in publishing photos from our vacation in Norway. Good news is that all photos are processed and I should have enough of time to publish them quite fast

Original plan was that Zuzka will go for trip around Norway with her friend living in Sveden and I will stay home because car was full. However more people from friend's side wanted to go later, thus we formed another (independent) group and went on our own. In the end, it turned out that group of Zuzka's friend did not go.

Because of Icelandic holiday shortly before we had not enough time to plan Norway thorougly (as with Iceland). Still we managed to cram enough of attractions into 9 days (It is terrible that people do not have 4 months of holidays :-) ) together with quite ambitious distance to travel. Norway is really long so if we wanted to get to Polar Circle and further we needed to flight back from there (see map later). On the other hand in means we did not have time to explore national parks in more details, so maybe later (yes, Norway is country that deserves another vacation there and with better weather we had!)

Again we used mainly youth hostels for accommodation. I have to say that they responded to e-mail enquiries much faster than in Iceland, but still there were a few problems. For example, just to try something more adventurous (at least for me) we ignored that one night was not fully confirmed (I just feel I need to enhance my terrible improvisation skills before our trip to India planned in November :-) ). There was another problem with hostels in Norway. Most of them ignored our Hostelling International membership and did not give us 15% discount even all of them claimed they did. Unfortunatelly I forgot all papers at the first hostel and it is hard to argue with them that way. So beware of them. They are lying with ease!

Our plan

Our plan started with buying "cheap" flight tickets (they were not the cheapest, but still only half price of Icelandic ones). Hence we bought outbound flight to Bergen and inbound from Oslo. So in the beginning we planned to to rent a car in Bergen and leave it in Oslo or if our plan and proposed prices suggested better price we could return to Bergen and go to Oslo by train.

Then, however, Zuzka told me: "Lofoten is beautiful place, but it is too far away". I like challenges and even more to google. So I've started google how it is possible to get to Lofoten faster. And I found airports are there too :-) After more exploration of car rental companies, SAS and Norwegian schedules and prices, we booked flight from Bodø to Oslo on 8th day.

Everthing else was simple - Zuzka drawn a few points of interest on map (she was prepared more than me) and together we located hostels and finished details of our route. All in all we drove for about 2800km (the longest distance for a day was about 510km), paid about 1800 NOK surcharge by leaving car in different place and started to pack.

Red is road, violet our flight (reconstructed from photos Zuzka made ;-) ) and numbers represent places where we slept.
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Bergen

Friday 18th of July: we arrived to Bergen about 2pm. Someone addicted to Anthon Berg chocolates as me can only applaud to decision that people from arrived flights can shop in tax free shops. Bergen +1 point.

We drove to Bergen, visited Bryggen, bought some food. Originally we hoped to go to nearby hill to see Bergen from nice viewpoint, but there was not time. We have been in Norway only 3 hours and already late :-(

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Bryggen is old storage area near a sea. It is used as tourist attraction now.
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Ships like this one are cruising along whole lenght of Norway shore. Could be nice way to spend time on it, but really expensive.
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Fjords, Voss, Hardanger (Lofthus)

To save some time following day we decided to leave Bergen and not to accommodate there, even we have paid deposit in local hostel. We headed about 170km to east to hostel in Hardanger (in village Lofthus).

We have seen beautiful fjords, nice mountains, a lot of tunnels (Norway has countless number of them), vilages and to our big surprise a lot of ripe cherries. I remember reading something about cherries in travel guide, but I did not pay attention. Sweet, juicy and big cherries. I am not big fan of cherries, but it was very hard to resist.

We arrived to Lofthus at about 9pm. I should mention that this hostel handled HI membership discount correctly. Highly appreciated!

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