An afternoon and evening in Balestrand

We loved the view from the balcony of our room at the Balestrand Hotel (photo).  But it was such a pretty sunny days that we decided to go for a walk in the mountains.  We quickly changed into lighter clothing but we were in such a hurry to leave that it was not until half way up the mountain that we noticed that, underneath the sausage, bread, cheese and fruit that we were bringing for lunch, there was the rather hefty novel (the final installment of the Clan of the Cave Bear series) than I have been reading on this vacation was nestled in the bottom underneath the emergency item of warm clothing.  Oh well, a little extra exercise!

We paused to look at the lovely St. Olaf’s church near our hotel (photo).  We also enjoyed the wildflowers along the road as we walked to the trailhead (photo).  Our trail began by climbing through the woods, then some nice views of the nearby mountains began to open up (photo).  After 90 minutes and 1200 feet of elevation gain, we paused at spot with a nice view to eat our lunch. We chatted with a fellow who arrived shortly after we did – he ran a restaurant down in town and was out for a ramble before they opened for dinner. He pointed out the location way down below us.

We finished eating and headed out again, aiming for the top of Raudmelen some six hundred meters above us (photo); soon we were out on the open mountain face, and a dramatic vista of waterfalls, snowfields, and fingers of fjords stretching out into the distances around us.  We could see the Esejorden right below us (separating Balestrand from Dragsvik), plus the waterfalls descending from Mt. Vindreter and Mt. Keipen, as well as the mouth of the Vetlefjorden on the other side of Dragsvik, plus the Fjaerlandsforden leading off to the nearby Jostedal and, of course, the Sognefjord itself stretching into the distance.

We hiked steadily but we had agreed to turn around at 4:30 so, a bit short of the top of Raudmelen’s 978 meter summit (photos of the vistas from near the top), we paused for a last snack before heading downward.  One of the usual reasons to head down in the late afternoon did not apply – because it stays light so late at night, we could have come down at 10 PM and still have had no trouble seeing our way.  It doesn’t stay completely light – it is more like dusk all night long (not sure what it would be like to hike in such lighting).  But we were getting tired and we wanted to be sure to get back to town before the restaurants started closing.

We decided to try the Cider House Restaurant about which we had heard at our lunch spot on the hike.  The menu seemed a bit precious but the food was excellent – for our main dishes I had manti filled with veal an cooked in cider, and Nancy had cigar böreks.  To drink I had Rallar Amber Ale from, the Aegir brewery over in Flåm, and we split chilled cider that was still but quite potent, made from the apples they grow beside the greenhouse / dining room; then for dessert an OK apple pie with an excellent vanilla sauce.  Restaurant highly recommended! On the way back to our room, we took a detour to look at several Swiss chalet style houses and Viking burial mounds along the road..   

Express boat through the fjords

We hit the Steens Hotel breakfast at 7 AM because we wanted to be sure of catching the 8 AM express boat departure.  We should have been even earlier – we arrived just as a tour bus was leaving, and by the time we got up to the more desirable second floor of the boat, all of the good window seats were taken. Still, the side windows were huge and the views very impressive throughout, and passengers were constantly going outside (though it was sunny, it was cold because the boat was moving so fast). After we left the mountains around Bergen, the landscape was relatively flat and the fjord very wide; we passed a couple of openings to the sea.  But once we turned into the Sognefjord, the mountains got rugged, high and patched with fields of snow.   We went by individual farmsteads perched on the mountainsides and small villages nestled along the shore.  We could even see glaciers at the tops of a couple of mountain areas.  Finally, we approached Balestrand where the daughter of the hotel's proprietor was there with a station wagon to pick up our bags so that we could walk unloaded to the hotel.

A full day in Bergen

Breakfast room in Steens Hotel

Today we explored Bergen’s history back to the 13th century and saw a more of Norway’s artistic history.  After having breakfast in the Steens Hotel’s ornate dining area (photo), we began the day with a guided tour of Bryggen, the area on the Bergen waterfront where the Hanseatic League operated from the 14th to the 18th Century.  It was an excellent tour which we would recommend to other Bergen visitors.  We learned about the trade in dried stockfish from northern Norway (photo of fish being weighed) that made Bergen such a valuable post.  The league’s trading offices ran as a sort of monastic order, in which a master, journeyman and several apprentices lived under conditions of mandatory celibacy; they were forbidden to fraternize with the local women (honored in the breach, apparently) but they could hope to accumulate enough wealth to go back home and get married.  We toured typical assembly areas (photos), living areas where heating was forbidden because of the danger of fire.  Apprentices were locked bunks for two, but rooms were a bit more spacious and decorative for the masters, who indeed had a hatch into their sleeping areas to the apprentices could reach in to clean up (photo).   The buildings, which are now used as shops, aren’t quite straight or aligned (note especially the two buildings at the right of the photo) because they were damaged by an explosion on a Nazi ship in the harbor in 1944.

We visited a wiener stand and the seafood market where we had reindeer sausage and delicious herbed and smoked salmon for lunch (photo). Then we swung by a couple of churches (we could not get into the cathedral (photo) because there was a wedding), then visited the Bergen Art Museum. We walked through room after room of J.C Dahl, Hans Heyerdahl, and other Norwegian artists (such as the interesting Nikolai Astrup, of whom we had never heard, including more Edvard Munch than in the Oslo art museum. Finally we walked over to the fortress that was erected in the 13th century when Bergen was the capital of Norway.  We walked around Haakon’s Hall (AD 1260) and Rosenkrantz’ Tower (AD 1560), which were already closed for the day.  We had a good supper on typical Norwegian food at the Pingvinen (good stuff) before turning in early because we had to catch the express boat to Balestrand the next morning.

Our first evening in Bergen

We climbed the hill from the railroad station to reach our hotel (see the nice view from our hotel window over to Floyen), dropped our bags, and headed back down to see some of Bergen.  We began by riding a funicular train up to Floyen  (photo of view from funicular), about a thousand feet above the town, where we enjoyed commanding views of both Bergen and the surrounding fjords (photo at end).  We hiked back down through the woods, enjoying the huge trees, ferns and mosses, and vertical cliffs (photos).  We emerged from the woods into the Sandviken area of town, and walked toward the water through narrow streets while looking at old houses (note one house built in 1796).  We passed along the Bryggen waterfront to the fish market, where I picked out a trout and had it cooked on the grill for dinner (Nancy had pre-breaded calamari, which wasn’t nearly as good).  Finally we climbed the hill past Johanneskirke to the University of Bergen to see more old houses.  Sunset was at about 11:15; so fare as I could tell (I got to sleep well after midnight), the sky never got completely dark.