Hi, everyone!
After our tour in Iceland ended, we stayed in Keflavik overnight near the airport. We had to leave for the airport at 5 a.m. on Saturday, but it was already daylight! This flight took us farther east and a little bit south, to Oslo Norway. Uncle Steven and his family invited us to meet them there to take a short tour of Norway.We met James and Thomas and their mommy and daddy at the hotel after lunch time. It was a busy place, because summer market was going on outside! Everybody except Panda wanted to take a walk, but James thought Panda would be lonely staying by herself. So I took a nap with Panda while everybody else walked up Karl Johann Gate to the royal palace and back. There were lots of stalls where people were selling clothing and food all along Karl Johan Gate, and the side streets were closed to traffic, just like last Saturday in Iceland!
The Scandic Byporten hotel has some nice things for children and little lions! Uncle Steven’s family are staying in a family room, and it has bunk beds on the wall! There are balloons in the lobby and some fun places to play.
We went to Norway to do a special tour, called Norway in a Nutshell. It’s a trip through the prettiest parts of the mountains between Oslo on the east and Bergen on the west. The trip starts and ends with train rides on the main line between Oslo and Bergen, but makes a loop down the mountains to a fjord for a boat ride and a trip back up the mountains on a special mountain-climbing train. People can do the trip in one long day, but Aunt Kara thought we’d enjoy it more if we did it in two days, instead. So on Sunday, we took the first train trip from Oslo to Voss, where the first bus trip down the mountains starts.
It was easy to get to the Oslo Central Train station, because it is right next to the Scandic Byporten hotel! We got on the train toward Bergen and watched the scenery for a little while. The countryside was very pretty and reminded me a little bit of Elk Rapids Michigan. When we got tired of watching scenery, there was something special on the train! We were traveling in the family car, and there was a playroom at the end of the car! All the surfaces were padded so we could stand up while the train was moving and not worry about getting hurt. There were two ladders and a crawling tunnel and lots of seats and windows to look out of and a cartoon video playing! Aunt Kara said the playroom was “a stroke of genius”!
When we got farther into the mountains, the scenery changed and looked more like Colorado or New Zealand. We started seeing mountains too tall for trees to grow, with snow on top. Then, when we got to Finse, there was snow all over! Finse is the highest stop on the line, at 1222 meters above sea level. That’s about 3900 feet! After Finse, we started going down the other side of the mountains. When we got off at Voss, there was only a little bit of snow on the mountains around us.
Grandma says Voss reminds her of Queenstown, New Zealand or some Colorado ski resort town. As soon as we got off the train, I made another troll friend! We didn’t have to walk far to the hotel, because it was right next to the train station. Fleischer’s Hotel has been in that spot for 152 years, but the rooms are very nice and there is a pretty view of Vangsvatnet lake. We walked to dinner at a pizza restaurant and saw the Vangskyrkja church. It’s even older than the hotel! After we ate our pizza, we stopped for soft ice cream on the way back to the hotel. It was yummy, but James and Thomas really needed to take baths after they finished theirs!
On Monday morning, we walked to the bus stop to get on the special bus to start our tour. The bus stop was right next to the hotel, too, just behind the train station! We started our trip on regular roads and drove past Tvindefossen waterfall. Our bus driver told us drinking water from this waterfall keeps you healthy, and that taking a bath in it is supposed to make you live 20 years longer! The water is very cold — newly melted ice — so maybe you just get frozen for 20 years! Then the bus took an old road down into the Naeroydalen valley. It’s VERY twisty and now is only used in the downhill direction. Along the way, there are pretty views of the valley and two waterfalls. We didn’t even need to get out of the bus to see them! Because the road had 13 switchbacks, passengers on both sides of the bus got good views of everything!
Then our bus drove through the Naeroydalen valley to Gudvangen, at the end of the Naeroyfjorden fjord. Fjords are deep inlets from the sea, carved between mountains by glaciers a long time ago. Norway has a lot of them, all around the coast. Naeroyfjorden is part of a Y-shaped system of fjords, and we were going to cruise down one arm and up the other arm (Sognefjorden and Aurlandsfjorden) to Flam. The boat we were cruising on was about the size of the ferry to the Westman Islands but wasn’t carrying any vehicles on the lower level. Before we got on, James and I took a look at a model of a Viking boat. When we got underway, it was chilly and misty on deck. The scenery was very pretty, even though it was a cloudy day. There were LOTS of waterfalls coming down the sides of the mountains.
By the time we were cruising up Sognefjorden toward Flam, it was raining! We had a nice warm spot inside to have a snack, and we took turns going out to look at the mountains and waterfalls. We even saw a helicopter delivering hay bales to a farm way up on the mountain in Aurlandsfjorden!
When we got to Flam, we had some time to spend before we got on the special mountain railroad. It was still raining, so we went to a café up the hill from the landing and had lunch. Then we went to the railroad museum before we got on the train.
The trip out of the valley was very pretty, but it was raining and hard to see out the windows of the train. James and Thomas were tired and fell asleep on the train. James used me for a pillow! There were lots of tunnels on the route, including a tunnel with a half-circle turn in the track so the train could climb the last part of the way up the mountain. Just after the tunnel, the train stopped so everybody could get out to see the top of a waterfall. It was very wet, even without the rain!
When we got on the train back to Oslo, it was still raining! The train was a little late, and we didn’t get back to Oslo until way past my bedtime. I was happy James and Thomas had things to do on the trip to help them pass the time! When we got back to our hotel, I went right to bed!
On Tuesday, Uncle Steven’s family flew back to the Netherlands and we went with them. We used different airports this time. The bus to Rygge airport near Oslo had a child safety seat for Thomas! James and Thomas and I had time to play at the airport before we got on the plane. Guess what? I got my own seat for the flight to Belgium!
Love,
Lion-san
It looks like Norway is a great place! It was nice and cool and with all that daylight. It is too bad you had all that rain too. The train museum looked like a great place to visit! The train rides looked like they knew kids too.