Norge: Round I, Part II

After spending the night in Lofthus, we were bound for Bergen, Norway's second largest city, with a pit-stop in Voss. Voss is apparently the extreme sports capital of Norway, although I have to say, I'm not entirely sure why. It's a cute enough town, but I failed to see anything particularly extreme about it. I probably wasn't looking in the right places.

You can't call yourself a town without a church.

It also boasts a lovely lake. Great place for lunch.

We went for a quick jaunt in the woods above the town. Nothing spectacular, but a much needed stretch of the legs after a lot of time spent in the car. Continuing on to Bergen was uneventful- just a lot of tunnels. But what else is new.
Bergen is a cute, if not terribly exciting city. Bryggen, the old wharf area, is quite cool though. It's a UNESCO site, since it is rather historically significant. It was an old Hanseatic kontoret, though none of the current buildings are original, due to many fires. Bergen was already an important port city well before the arrival of the Hanseatic League. In its heyday, Bryggen was where the German merchants lived and did business, and the Germanic influence is very visible in the architecture of these buildings. Interestingly, they really were not at all integrated into the Norwegian society; on the contrary, they were essentially segregated from it.

Colorful and rickety are the best adjectives to describe Bryggen.

A statue honoring the dried herring- source of Bergen's ancient power.

The next day we headed out of the city and up to Flåm, making a minor detour up part of the Nærøyfjord, another UNESCO site. It's name literally means "narrow fjord", so it should come as no surprise that this fjord is indeed quite narrow- only 500m wide in some places. And it's beautiful.

I could live here. Happily.

Artsy dew shots.

Flåm is a pretty tiny village- about 400 residents- on an arm of the Sognefjord, Norway's largest fjord, and the third longest in the world. But it's estimated about a million tourists come through every year, mostly on cruise ships. And it's easy to see why. 

The Flåmbana. The steepest non-cog railway in something or other. Norway?
 Northern Europe? The world? I can't remember.

Kjossfossen.

But we'll come back to Flåm. 
A ways down the valley is the larger village of Aurland. And part of Norway's National Turistrut begins in here, winding its way up to another high plateau. And on the way up is the Stegastein overlook. I first heard about it on an architecture blog, and was very excited to see it in person.

It did not disappoint.

Nor did the view.

The road over this particular plateau is call the snow road. Before the Lærdal tunnel (clocking in at 24.5km long, making it the longest road tunnel in the world) was built, this was the main route between Lærdal and Aurland. Since tunnels are mind-boggling boring (if you seen one, you've seen them all), we opted for this route. And it was an excellent choice.

Most excellent.

More rock piles.

The plateaus are wonderfully barren.