Bergen

We're heading to the far western shores of Norway to visit the charming seaside town of Bergen, which is located on a picturesque harbor lined with historic buildings and surrounded by seven mountains.

We're showing you a preview of the city in this video with the historic waterfront and lively outdoor market scenes, including a trip up the mountain top by funicular for a spectacular view over the city.

To get there we're going to take a boat ride and scenic train journey from Oslo across the country, over the mountains, to Bergen. There are several different ways to travel to Bergen. Of course there's an International Airport so you can fly here in just a few hours from anywhere in Europe, but the train and boat ride from Oslo is an excellent option that many savvy travelers choose, because taking that ride can be just as enjoyable as being at the destination.

Coming right up we will show you fine details of that trip across Norway by train and boat, starting out in Oslo the capital of Norway, and then across the mountains on a beautiful ride to Flam, where we catch the boat and travel through the Sognefjord to Bergen on the west coast.

Most travelers to Bergen are also visiting Oslo, the capital of Norway. In that case you can take one of the most spectacular train rides in all of Europe. It's easy to board the train, you just get on with your carry-on luggage, in this case, and find your seat, settle in kick back and let the journey begin, heading cross-country through some fascinating mountain terrain, passing lakes and rivers and waterfalls.

Norway in a Nutshell

This special trip is called Norway in a Nutshell because it shows you a big cross-section of the country in just one day. It's always a pleasure to travel by train, especially with this kind of scenery gliding by. You don't have to worry about driving, or getting stuck in traffic, you're not crammed in like on a tour bus, you can walk around in the train, kick back and read a book or take a nap, have a conversation, visit the snack bar. The scenery keeps getting more spectacular as you climb through the central regions of Norway, seeming a little bit like Switzerland, with tall mountains in the distance and glaciers with lakes where the water is clear blue color.

This visual feast is like a natural painting with trees and bushes along the edge of the water, lovely grasses and shrubs, and just wonderful colorful elements of nature outside our windows. You'll see a few mountain cabins, lots of snow, and people riding their bicycles on the mountain road. Most of the other travelers on board the train are tourists from all different parts of the world, so it's kind of a nice opportunity to have a little conversation, or at least attempt some conversation. Despite language barriers you can always communicate. I've taken about 500 train trips in my travels through Europe, including quite a bit in the Swiss Alps, which are really spectacular, but nothing somehow quite compares with this scenery out the window, these alpine meadows with glaciers and raging rivers. What a combination!

The entire route from Oslo to Bergen covers a distance of about 300 miles. It's the highest standard gauge railway in northern Europe, crossing the plateau at 4,000 feet above sea level. We are travelling in July and there's still plenty of snow. The first short section of rail opened on the Bergen end in 1883 as narrow gauge, and by 1909 the route extended all the way to Oslo.

Typical of the European long-distance trains there's a dining car on board, so you can just queue up, wait your turn, get a coffee, have a drink or a complete meal. It's like a coffee shop on wheels. The train can be a friendly setting for meeting Scandinavians, and you'll find that most of them speak some English. Nobody's in a rush at this point so it's an opportune place to meet the locals and have a chat.

Flam Railway

You'll change trains Midway at the junction of with Myrtle and board the Flam railway which is one of the most scenic rides in Europe. The Myrdal Junction is a busy place, but there's no real town here to see. You're just on the platform to wait for your next train. There are also local trains from here down into Bergen, but we're going down the mountain, down to Flam, a waterfront village where we catch our boat.

It's a busy train, so you do need to make reservations during the high season from May through September, and everybody gets a good view. The Flam railway fortunately stops now and then to let passengers get off the train to enjoy the view. The most spectacular sight is a rolling gushing waterfall, a terrific photo opportunity, but wipe the water off your lens. It's like being out in the Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls, or in a heavy rainstorm with a big spray coming at you.

You've got about ten minutes to take in the sight, snap your pictures. The only reason the train stops here is to show you the view, so take advantage. Some people just sit in the train but it's a lot better to get out and experience it. Yes, you might get a little wet, but no harm, it's all part of the fun and you'll soon dry off. No doubt there's something special about waterfalls, and this one is very convenient because we're halfway through the journey, 30 minutes down, hop out, take a break, jump back on, 30 more minutes to the bottom. At this point we've reached 2,000 foot elevation and it's a very comfortable platform. You could walk around on it, very safe with the railings, and then you try and figure out what car you were on and get back in your seat.

And then we continue the second half of the journey down which gets even more spectacular with beautiful mountain scenery, many hairpin turns. Flam railway is the steepest standard gauge train in Europe where almost 80% of the journey has a gradient of over five percent. Because of the sharp angle and picturesque nature, the Flam line is now almost exclusively a tourist service and has become the third most visited tourist attraction in Norway, carrying about 600,000 passengers annually.

The train journey runs through fantastic nature, past deep mountains, breathtaking waterfalls, with twenty tunnels and one bridge, and offers so many points of interest that many people feel like traveling it multiple times. National Geographic Traveler magazine has named the Flam railway as one of the top-ten train journeys in Europe, and Lonely Planet named it as the best train journey in the world in 2014.

Toward the bottom the line passes a spectacular waterfall with a 460 foot drop, of the most exciting attractions of the trip. Maximum speed downhill is a leisurely 19 miles an hour, and uphill it's 25 miles an hour. This train ride downhill takes one hour but the sights are so spellbinding it seems like ten minutes. It's the only branch line heading out from that main Oslo -- Bergen route.

Towards the bottom of the journey the valley widens and changes character, becoming flatter and with more vegetation and some houses. The little hamlet of Flam is located on the Aurlandsfjord, a branch of the Sognefjord, with 400 permanent residents. It's almost entirely a tourist area featuring among other things a little hotel and a cruise ship port. And you can have lunch while waiting for the boat. It's a very pleasant little village. It's been called heaven on earth, and of course there's a gift shop. There's an information counter and there's a ticket office where you can buy train tickets or boat tickets. After about one hour the boat starts boarding to begin the ride to Bergen.

Boat Ride

You'll see lots of great scenery during the boat ride with the mountains towering high above on both sides of this chasm. The best views are during the first two hours when the mountains are steepest and the fjord  is narrow, so be sure to spend time by a window or even better out on a deck initially. The Sognefjord is the largest and best-known fjord in Norway, and one of the longest in the world. It stretches 127 miles inland from the ocean to the small village of Skjolden in the municipality of Luster.

Sognefjord is more 3000 feet deep for about half of its length, reaching a maximum depth of 4,300 feet. The captain pulls right up to the big waterfall so we all get a good look. Cliffs surrounding the fjord rise almost cheer from the water up to heights of over 3,000 feet, making this most dramatic landscape. The average width is nearly three miles. There's more than a dozen side fjords that branch off from the main body and we see several of them while cruising along beyond the inner end of Sognefjord lies a mountain range that rises over six thousand feet high and is covered by europe's largest glacier. We also get a nice view of several picturesque villages along the shore, always with the dramatic mountain backdrop. There is a casual snack bar on the ship for a light meal, like a hamburger and soda, but not much else. The fjords were dug out by giant glaciers that shaped the landscape through several ice ages. This created a deep, narrow and elongated body of water with steep land on three sides. And all along Norway's west coast these inlets are often surrounded by dramatic mountain scenery as we see here.

Frankly at five and a half hours, this ride is pretty long, so you might want to consider alternatives, such as a shorter boat ride then take a bus to the main train line and continue on to Bergen by rail more quickly.

There is a very nice reward towards the end of the boat ride as you approach the city of Bergen, travel through a vast archipelago of islands and channels linked together by bridges. You'll see a lot of colorful houses along the shore, some boats tied up at docks, probably some second homes that are vacation places for the locals, as well as very large mansions up on the cliffs. It's really quite a sight.

Bergen

After several hours in the boat, you'll get the first breathtaking glimpse of the town of Bergen, located in the head of a long natural inlet enhanced by a picturesque harbor, lined with historic buildings and many boats, and surrounded by seven mountains. You surely want to be out on deck in these closing dramatic moments of the long boat ride, soaking up the view and getting your pictures. It's a very easy exit from the boat because it's a pretty small vehicle and it docks right in the heart of downtown

The city wraps around the harbor with the especially exciting Brygen, the old historic district on the north end in buildings that have been warehouses for fish but are now shops and restaurants.

During the summer there is a very late and long twilight, with sunset stretching on for an hour and finally getting dark about 11 pm, making the evening a great time for being out and about, having a look at the people and diverse neighborhoods of this city.  Bergen is the second biggest city in Norway with a population of about 250,00 people, and in typical European style, the downtown is quite lively and filled with shops, cafes, restaurants and pedestrian streets.

The plan: walking tour of town center and the outdoor food market on the harbor; visit to the historic Brygen; and ride up the mountain by funicular to get a great view over the city. Our walking tour will have a look at downtown and some of the quiet residential neighborhoods.

A short walk to the edge of town brings you to the funicular which takes you up the Floyen Mountain for a marvelous view across the city from a 1000-foot high observation perch. The ride just takes eight minutes, making this an easy excursion. At the top you get a spectacular view of the town of Bergen and the harbor, making a nice way to start the day.

You can spot various attractions from up here and visually plot out where you want to walk to later in the day, showing some idea of how far things are from each other. You'll see: the University Museum; Brygen Museum; a park in the midst of downtown; the harbor and adjacent food marketplace; the network of downtown streets, and much more. At the top there is a series of nature trails if you really want to get into it. When you are finished you might consider walking down the attractive path through the woods for a nature hike that provides beautiful scenery along with some exercise.

There are many fine sites to see in town that will keep you quite busy and entertained. One of the fun activities is a visit to the colorful open-air food market at the harbor, especially busy in the summertime, rich with fresh produce, fish and meat. They have fruits and sandwiches to go as well so you can pick up a relatively inexpensive lunch, or just get a light bite while browsing around.

The most impressive historic site in Bergen is the large collection of wooden buildings known as the Brygen, constructed about 300 years ago. These wooden buildings are so important they are on the UNESCO list of world heritage sites. The Brygen was the main residences, offices, shops and warehouses of this thriving town, which was one of the important cities of the Hanseatic League, the major trading network of Northern Europe. The buildings are open as a living museum, with guides in period costumes who walk you through it and explain the fascinating history. The tour brings you into three separate museums in this building complex, filled with original artifacts and structures that reveal the daily life of these early merchants, sailors and fishermen.

As you will discover, the Brygen is more than just a facade of shop fronts -- it's an entire historic neighborhood connected by wooden alleyways with restaurants, more shops. The museum was created on the spot about 20 years ago after a fire burned out several structures. Archaeologists came in after the fire and did some important excavations that discovered the earliest foundations of house sites which gave clues into the daily life of the people who lived here hundreds of years ago. After touring the historic displays leave time for exploring the shops sprinkled throughout this complex, many with specialty items of Norway.

In the hillside behind the Brygen you can wander through a residential neighborhood that developed hundreds of years ago before there were any automobiles, so as as a result you have narrow, quiet lanes that are for pedestrians, making a peaceful place to stroll.

Bergen is worth exploring just to browse around the old streets and alleyways, which can be a most satisfying experience. The small wooden houses lying higgledy-piggledy, cobblestone step ways climb steeply and the passion for flowers is all around. You'll find he occasional shop in the middle of this residential district as well.

It's a charming spot that has been beautifully preserved. There are little gardens in front of immaculate houses, with little alley ways you can walk through -- very charming and picturesque. This neighborhood is very close to the shopping area, only about five blocks away from the busy downtown streets that have buses and cars and stores and outdoor markets, but here in this residential quarter there is an entirely different atmosphere of a quiet, peaceful, calm. You can come up here in the morning or afternoon to have a stroll, and you'll see very few cars in these narrow lanes. It's a queit neighborhood for local residents.

An outstanding visit is to nearby Bergenhus fortress, the castle at the mouth of the harbor with some buildings dating back to the 1240s, when it was first constructed as the main fortified home of Norway's rulers. If you explore it you'll see their grand meeting hall and other rooms with historic displays of furnishings, costumes and weapons. You will learn that 600 years ago Bergen was densely populated, the largest city in Norway and capital of the country.

Two of the main buildings in the fort are Rosenkrantz Tower and Haakon's Hall, the royal chamber built around 1260, which is the largest non-religious medieval building still standing in Norway. The castle basement is vaulted in a medieval style to prevent fire and to hold up the floor of the banquet hall above it. This complex is still used today for ceremonial events and concerts.

Just a few blocks away is the oldest building in Bergen, St. Mary's Church, which dates back to the 12th century. It's a rare example of the Romanesque architecture and therefore, it's really one of the most important and historic buildings in the entire country. It's been rebuilt over the years and renovated and redecorated, but you can still see the basic Romanesque structure with the walls around it vaulted arches and a very small windows. It's been in continuous use ever since.

You will need plenty of time to enjoy the downtown square at the heart of Bergen. There are many modern buildings of course throughout town, and there are extensive parklands beyond the city as well as a large park in the middle of town surrounded by green lawns with a big fountain in the middle.

Of course the city hosts a number of great restaurants, many emphasizing the local delights of fish and potatoes, along with varied vegetables and all your standard European items. In the summer it is mild enough to eat outdoors for lunch or dinner, so you will find many restaurants with sidewalk tables. Next day we travel to Oslo, capital of Norway, returning on that same spectacular train ride, cross-country through some fascinating mountain terrain, passing lakes and rivers and waterfalls.

You can also watch the video on the dedicated video page.