A Return to Bergen

A few years back, I went to Oslo for work. At the end of my trip, I had a couple of spare days, so I flew to Bergen and took the glacier train back.

Pictures: [ part 1  |  part 2 ]

This year, Nicole and I went back for our own visit, with friends from Boulder. Let me tell you: it was a lot more fun not by myself!

Flights were complicated – we wouldn’t get direct to Bergen, of course, and from Charlotte even getting there with two stops was complicated and pricey. Our best option was a direct to Munich on American, and then a separate ticket with a European airline to take a direct hop over to Bergen. Even that got complicated, but that’s another story. This gave us a healthy layover for a beer garden and some sightseeing:

Munich

Bergen

Sogndal

We drove out to Sogndal with Joel & Katrin, where we had a rental overlooking a fjord. It served as our home base for a few days of adventure and turned out to be, well, kind of fantastic.

Fjords

We got in late in the day, so the next day we went on a “fjord safari” out of Flåm… if you think you’ve seen beauty, wow.

Then we went to Undredal (an inspiration for Disney’s Frozen) and saw its Stave Church (c.1147), then on to the Stegastein Viewpoint.

We went on several ferries (which was a lot easier than it sounds), through many tunnels (which is more of an engineering marvel than you probably believe), and stopped at picturesque opportunities.

We took a hike on the King’s Road (Filefjell Kongevegen, nearly 1,000 years old) and saw Borgund Stave Church (c.~1200) and the red church next door (called Borgund Church, and “only” about 160 years old).

A glacier

The highlight of the trip for me was the glacier at Jostedalsbreen Nasjonalpark. There was a spectator area quite a ways off, but you just have no idea of the scale in these pictures unless you walk right up to it. So we did. I had wet socks, but it was worth it.

Dachau / Freising

At the end of the trip, we got back to Bergen and ate at Bryggeloftet & Stuene (my second time!), and then parted ways the next morning. Nicole and I headed back to Munich to catch our flight home the morning after that. Instead of going back into Munich, we rented a Polestar and zipped down the Autobahn at its top speed. (I’d driven faster than that before, but never legally.)

We were originally going to go to Neuschwanstein Castle, which was right at the edge of our range, but it was going to be closed too early. We opted for the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial (where I could only bring myself to take a single picture), and then into Freising’s main square (called Marienplatz, just like in Munich), which dates back ~1,300 years.

We had traditional Bavarian food at a beer garden, crashed at the airport Hilton, and called it a trip.