05-22 Flam, Norway and the Twizzy

Karen and I work hard before our trips researching and planning. It is part of the fun of traveling for us. There are going to be many times during this trip where we will be pinching ourselves and saying, "We are finally, really here." Flam is one of those places.

We took the first tender into Flam at 8:20.

Walked around and stopped at the train ticket office and Flam Info building.

Then we went over to the Twizzy place and waited until 30 min past our scheduled time to pick up a couple of these cute electric cars.

Nobody showed, so Pat walked over to the train info place to talk to Lizbeth. She called and someone came. The lady spent time blaming the other lady for why our reservation was changed to April 1st. And she just kept showing us her proof that it was changed. Karen just wanted her to get on with renting the cars to us and Karen finally said, "We already lost 45 minutes of our day in Flam".  She finally caught on and went on to setting us up.

Eventually this delay did prevent us from taking the train to Myrdal and hiking 7 miles back to town.

Finally we got on the road.

The cars are really pretty zippy. We had a great time on the windy, twisty road up to the viewpoint we were headed to.

Normally these don't have any side windows and it can get pretty cold at 40MPH in 50 degree weather. But they now have an option for side curtains and the two cars we had came with them. There was also a GPS and site-seeing information via voice from the GPS. Gloves were provided by the rental agency.

Here we are at a pull-out area before we got to the top.

After playing follow the leader for the 10 miles we finally made it to the Stegastein/Aurland Viewpoint. It's really a cool viewpoint and no big tour buses were here when we were here. Since we are on our own, we have all the time we want.

They built this neat waterfall effect out of wood.

Here is the view looking back to Flam.

When we've had enough scenery we hopped in our little cars and recharged the battery on our way back down.

Sometimes we meet another one coming up the road.

Karen even got to drive.

Time to say goodbye to our little "green" cars.

We had wanted to go up to Myrdal via the Flam Railroad but our late start prevented us from getting tickets to get up and back in time to re-board the ship.

So, we opted for lunch, shopping, and train picture taking. This is most of the shopping area in Flam. The newer ferry to Gudvangen is in front of the older, classic one. The Flam Museum and gift shop is the yellow building in the foreground. In the center of the picture is the red Train Ticket building.

We hiked some paths above the town to get these views.

Brian wanted to go up the tracks to get a better picture of the train either coming or going. We had the schedule so we knew where it would be. We said goodbye to Karen as she wanted to shop and see the museum.

A lot of people want to board the train all at the same time.

Brian and Pat made our way up the tracks to the Luden Station just before the train arrived and let off a couple of school kids on bicycles.

Nice waterfall out your back door.

We came back via the other side of the river that flows through the town taking more pictures and enjoying the dry weather. We met back up with Karen in the park and even had enough time to go through the museum before taking the tender back to the boat.

Tonight after dinner we played Trivial Pursuit and said good night to a beautiful sunset.