Bergen, Fjords, Weather and Roads

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Day1. We decided to hire a car and we're lucky enough to be given an upgrade at the airport to a great big Volvo something or other (I hate driving and cars, can you tell?). We drove out of the airport with the sat nav set up for the hotel but something went wrong and we found ourselves in Bergen going through a toll tunnel which we obviously had to then go back through so that was a good start. We got to our hotel, the Radisson Blu in the city centre which is well and truly in need of an upgrade but I'll leave that for trip advisor. The hotel carpark is ridiculously small, especially if you've been upgraded to a massive Volvo but Andy likes a challenge so he managed to park it. we didn't realise it's better and cheaper to park in the multi story a little way away and were decidedly shocked to find two invoices for NOK500 on the windscreen a couple of days later (didn't have to pay it all but still).

So anyway, the hotel room was really nice and had a fantastic view over the man made lake which is an odd feature for a town on the coast I though, still it was lovely to look down on the goings on outside and over the town to the mountains beyond. We went out to explore and found a lovely restaurant for dinner that night.

Day 2. The following day I had booked a fjord tour, we hadn't realised how awful the weather can get in this part of Norway so spent 3.5 hours on a boat in the thick fog getting wet when ever we ventured up on deck. Despite the weather though we loved it, the captain piloted the catamaran right up next to a waterfall where some passengers went out and got a bucket of water for us all to try. The weather may have been dismal but we're English and a bit of damp fog doesn't get us down and we could see a bit of the stunning scenery so it wasn't a total waste of money at all.

That night we ate dinner in a restaurant next to the hotel, and had a really lovely fish stew.

Day 3. We decided to go out in the car and not knowing the area at all we picked a town on the map next to a fjord and put it in the satnav.

Norwegian roads are ever so slightly terrifying!!

The scenery was obviously spectacular but driving to a town on a fjord means driving along a fjord, in a huge Volvo, on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of a narrow two way road, with a solid rock wall on one side and a shear drop into the North Sea on the other! Andy is a good, confident and very experienced driver but he was having kittens and stamping on the break whenever we met another car and turning the wheel ever so slightly away from that car towards the shear drop into the fjord....terrifying!! And then there's the tunnels, loads of then, narrow and dark and with every chance of a car, lorry or bus coming the other way and nowhere to go but backwards...yeah, terrifying.

Anyway we get to our destination, a tiny speck of a town called Mo in the Modalen region, funnily enough and the top of the fjord we'd been on the previous day. Mo is beautiful with a sandpit full of toys that no ones steals because everyone knows everyone. It has a gorgeous little white church, a view over the fjord to die for and a pool, gym, library, shop and restaurant!! I imagine it gets pretty cut of during winter but in Spring when we were there it's just lovely.

We decide to go from Mo to Flam, sadly not to go on the railway (a misunderstanding between myself and Andy) so we drove through some more wonderful countryside and along some more hair raising roads to get there...it was a miserable, a tourist trap of a place made all the worse for not going on the train so we bought some crisps and marshmallows and left. The journey home was a nightmare, we were put on a detour from Voss which took us 3 hours over the time it should have, more scary roads, but this time in a convoy of cars and lorries going over unsurfaced roads and one at a time over a bridge that I can only assume was not quite up to the task! We did however stop at a brilliant waterfall with steps up that you can climb and go behind the water, I wish I could remember the name of it but sadly it's gone. By this time the kids were starting to rebel so stayed in the car, we however really enjoyed it.

we drove through ski resorts still with snow and frozen lakes looking for somewhere to eat. Unfortunately it seems there are very few roadside places to eat in that area of Norway, and no shops so by the time we got back to Bergan it was 11:30pm and we were starving...here we slum it and go against our own holiday rule of NO MCDONALDS UNLESS YOU'RE IN AMERICA! The 24 hour McDonalds round the corner from the hotel was a godsend, so a midnight Macfeast it was.

Day 4. We went on the funicular railway to the top of Floyen Mountain...brilliant! The weather was beautiful and the views were spectacular. By this time Hattie's bad back was hurting her a lot, the hours in the car the day before had aggrivated her injury from last year and so we couldn't do much walking or exploring at the top of the mountain which was a shame so after a while we went back to the hotel so she could rest up. Andy and I went for a walk around the town, around the Bryggen area which was getting ready for the Tour de Fjords bike race starting the next day. Dinner that night was in the hotel, food was nice, waiter was lovely, decor was decidedly old fashioned.

Day 5. Our last day but our flight wasn't until evening so we decided to drive to the cable car and go up another mountain...the highest one of the 7 around Bergen called Ulriken. Sadly the weather was dismal, we couldn't see more than a few meters infront of ourselves. When it cleared we managed to get glimpses of the spectacular view over Bergen and the surrounding area but it didn't stay clear for long, the rain, wind and patches of snow made it very cold and Hattie's back was suffering so off we went again for a quick drive before heading out to the airport and home.

I would go back to Bergen again, the town is lovely, the scenery stunning, the people are laid back and beautiful and the food was great...their weather on the other hand really needs a good talking to!!

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