Norway in a Nutshell

Bergen is an old city, established 1383, and some buildings around the dock area retain their facades, the city centre has a large cobblestone mall with beautiful bronze statues at strategic places... the expected Vikings and explorers celebrating their history ... the unexpected, a bare foot homeless boy leaning up against the steps of an office building, a modern young girl standing casually against a shop entrance. We walked the dock area and then grabbed our bags and walked the 1k to the train station. The walk took us past a high end shopping precinct with beautifully stage windows, but no prices, then into a very quaint market area closed to cars, all cobblestones and old pitch roofed buildings and offering food and wares to tourists, but not too tacky really, quite charming in fact.

Norway in a Nutshell

Here we sit waiting for the train to Voss. Other passengers surround us in the warm cafe drinking hot chocolate ... a grandma with two grand daughters and their backpacks and skis,  young people off to ski for the day, and other tourists of cours

What a train ride. This is the first day of our 3 day 'Norway in a Nutshell' tour. The train is clean and warm, quiet and spacious. 

The line travels into the mountains and onto Oslo. We disappear into tunnels for 10 minutes at a time and pop out beside a fjord decorated with snow and ice and tiny boat houses and an occasional village and then we plunge into darkness again. After an hour or so the fjord disappeared and the rushing river that feeds it claimed the scenery.  A tumbling of icy clear water over rocks and around snowy, pine filled islands and of course the higher into the mountains, the deeper the snow, the thicker the ice on the backwaters and the swifter the river became.

 We pulled into Voss, our home for 2 nights. The hotel is adjacent to the train line. It is so lovely, established in 1864, and the old world charm is genuine in the solid timber doors, high ceilings and period furniture and the scent that only lovely clean old places can give. Our room is spacious and our view is beautiful, over a lake and into the mountains. Here is the blurb from the website about this lovely old hotel.

There is something about Fleischer's Hotel. You notice it when you stand outside the tall wooden building, with pointed towers, spires and bay windows in a myriad of Swiss and dragon style. You notice it when you walk into the lobby and see signatures of former greats who have been here before you. When you walk through the hallways and hear history whispering to you. You sit in the dining room, as Emperor Wilhelm of Germany did, so Edvard Grieg did, indeed, so even the Prince of Siam did.

Here came, princes and princesses, kings and queens, princes and emperors. To Voss, after days on end of travel. They traveled by steamer and rail and horse- drawn carriage along the dusty roads. Through sparsely populated rural areas. Over windswept mountain passes.

In the middle of this beautiful but desolate landscape, right in this nothing far off the beaten track , they found someone who could give them what they were used to, which made them feel at home. And that's exactly how we want you to feel it too.

And when you come into your own room, it's the same views over “Vangsvatnet”, the green hills and the mighty “Gråsida” that have always been there.

It was there when Johan Seckman Fleischer, ancestor of the Fleischer family, came to Voss as a judge in the mid -1700s. It was here when Emperor Wilhelm came here, again and again in the 1890s. And it is here for you. Here today. Welcome 

We ventured out to walk along the lakeside and into town but only got a few hundred metres and rain began to fall, so back to the bar. Carved and ornately panelled timber work, soft leather couches covered in animal skins ( we think perhaps reindeer and hope the others were not arctic wolf or some rare animal) ordered a beer and a baileys or two, and spent the next hour or so in front of an open fire, bliss.