After breakfast this morning we went for a final walk along the front and round to the supermarket to buy snacks / lunch for the train. The weather has changed again and it was a bit drizzly but at least not raining hard. We picked up a sandwich for Chris and a salad for me then went back to the hotel to finish packing up. On the way we called back into City Hall to see if we could go upstairs this time. As it turned out the downstairs was closed and the upstairs was open so we walked round the gallery and all the rooms up there. One of the rooms is used for wedding ceremonies which could have been what was going on yesterday, the guide book I have suggested that the room upstairs is where the Nobel prizes are either decided or awarded but none of the information suggested this was the case. The council chamber was also upstairs which we could go in as they didn’t seem to have started work yet. After walking all the way round we went back to the hotel, finished packing up then checked out and walked to the station to get ready for our 7 hour trip to Bergen. Our seats are great, we reserved ‘comfort’ class which basically means we get free coffee and loads of leg room so we settled in, got our lunch out and got ready for one of the great train journeys of the world. The weather was quite mixed on the journey but we did have some sunny bits although a lot of the first half of the route was through the trees or tunnels which didn’t make it easy to look at the scenery. This also meant that we had only been on board for a couple of hours and had already eaten all of our lunch! After almost four hours we decided to head off to get a drink, it made us realise what a good decision booking comfort class was as although the seating wasn’t too bad it didn’t look like they had as much room as we did and at least one of the carriages was really hot. Not long after this we hit the mountains, we saw a ski resort although we couldn’t work out where it was then about 30 minutes later we were at the highest point of the journey at Finse which is 1,222 metres above sea level and one of the railways most exposed sections. It is where Scott and Amundsen came to train for their polar expeditions. There was a lot of snow around between Ustaoset and Finse but interestingly the rivers and streams didn’t have a lot of water in them, I am not sure if this was because the snow hasn’t melted yet or if they only have water during the melt. Unfortunately from Finse we entered a tunnel which seemed to go on for ages but apparently was only 10km. This is possibly the most frustrating part of the journey as there were loads of waterfalls but it is also the section of track where there are a lot of covered sections to stop the snow falling on the track so we didn’t get to look at them for long! We stopped at Myrdal which is where a number of people got off to join the Flamm railway, we are doing this in a couple of days time and we will definitely need our puffers, hats and gloves as it looked very cold outside, luckily all we had to do today was look at it out of the window. We entered another tunnel and when we came out of it we had obviously dropped down quite a bit as a lot of the snow had gone but unfortunately it seemed to have got darker as it was very overcast, but considering what the forecast had been we have been very lucky and haven’t had rain for the whole journey. we arrived pretty much on time, not quite the efficiency of the Swiss but they did keep stressing that the train was on time (even when they actually left a little late). By the time we got to Bergen it wasn’t raining so we walked to the hotel which was nice to stretch our legs although possibly doing it without cases would have been better! We checked in and went up to the room and checked out the view, we overlook the Bryggen on the other side of the river, then went down to the bar for a well earned drink. All in all it was a nice journey but I am not sure I would say it is one of the most scenic journeys we have ever done.
