Feeling very fjordtunate to have just spent a few days exploring Norway. What a place! My friend Lottie and I had spent the first half of this year sending each other green screen-like images of Norway from the various travel bloggers we’d both found ourselves following. So it was surreal to finally witness those views ourselves.
Having deliberated long and hard about which part of the country to visit, we settled on Bergen for its cheap(er) flights and proximity to the fjords. After a quick scout around Hostelworld and Booking.com, we snapped up some of the last remaining beds in Bergen and Aurland and left the rest of the planning till the departures lounge in Gatwick.
Another friend’s parents had visited Bergen a couple of weeks before us and had exploited the cultural scene, visiting Grieg’s house and various museums. Our few days in the city, however, were somehow filled with hiking, swimming and even kayaking (more on that later). So it really is a city of two halves and I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t enjoy it.
Despite our 3am arrival, hostels don’t lend themselves too well to a lie in and anyway, we were keen to make the most of the free breakfast before hitting the hill which was the backdrop to our accommodation. Mount Ulriken, to be precise. Although you can hop in a cable car from the city up to the top, we decided to hit the trail (and many steps) which made for a satisfying, if sweaty, arrival at the summit. But the views were 100% worth it and didn’t stop at the top, for once you reach the peak, the mountain opens out into a stunning course of hiking trails, studded by shimmering lakes.
After I nearly took us off in a very wrong direction, we found the right path and started the descent which the map erroneously suggested had a gentler gradient than our route up. This was our first reckoning with Norwegian hiking trails/scrambles and a good warm up for the days ahead.
Following a pit stop at Solros bakery for their very final cardamom buns, which we ate smugly/guiltily as others walked away empty handed, we headed down past the port and on to my new favourite place in the world - the absolute oasis which is Nordnes Sjøbad - a pool, sauna, diving board idyll on the edge of the fjord. It was similar in its retro, timeless vibe to Krapfenwaldbad in Vienna - another Mecca for mermaid wannabes.
We spent three happy hours swimming in the freezing sea, continuously flinging ourselves off the boards with all of Bergen’s schoolchildren and a few other enthusiastic adults and, of course, braving the sauna which I found even more intense than the freezing fjord.
When it was finally time to call it quits, we packed up and vowed to return on our final day.
After a salmon burger (as tempted as I was by the whale offerings…), we trekked back up to the hostel and hit the hay. We found that the trick to sleeping well in noisy, multi-person hostel rooms is to simply knacker yourself out and it turns out Bergen is the perfect place for doing exactly that!
Day two was decidedly less sunny but that didn’t dampen our spirits. Instead, we started the day with a kayak session, courtesy of the Green Kayak NGO, which rents out boats to tourists for free, in exchange for litter picking. Whilst we did try to collect as much rubbish as possible, we were thoroughly shown up by the Norwegian pair who returned with a bucket 20x as full as ours.
After more buns, (cinnamon this time!), we set off on another hike in search of a famous new pedestrian footbridge in the hills across the city. Whilst the walk there was very picturesque, we somehow failed to find this supposedly 6 kilometre-long bridge and instead found ourselves up another scrambly mountain. Luckily for us, the sun doesn’t set until late into the night, so despite the hour we had plenty of daylight to retrace our steps back to Bergen ahead of an early start the next day.
I should note that our lack of planning for this trip, included neither of us googling how far it was from Bergen to our second stop: Aurland. We just booked the hostel there because the setting looked pretty epic and it was also vaguely in the same region of Norway. After a momentary heart attack on thinking we might have to ride, and buy return tickets for, ‘the most scenic train in the world’, the hostel receptionist thankfully directed us to a bus company, meaning we had enough money left to eat for the rest of the trip after all!
Although not dubbed ‘most scenic in the world’, I’d say the bus journey must be up there too. We passed waterfalls and lakes, drove through insane James Bond-esque mountain tunnels and finally arrived in Aurland - a little town on the edge of Aurlandsfjord.
Since we’d had a few hours of rest on the bus, we ditched our bags and almost immediately set off into the woods to the famous Stegastein viewpoint. This was the first of two journeys we ended up making there, (one intentional, one not). The views both on the way up, and from the viewpoint of course, were unmatched and I’m not sure I’ll ever get a better screensaver.
After a quick ‘Stegastein skydiving’ google (Lottie, not me), we made our way back down and ended the day with a dip in the fjord. No diving board this time but a similar freezing temperature!
Our final full day in Norway began with the most scenic breakfast of all time by the river. We fuelled up for what we thought might be a two hour round trip waterfall hike. Having passed the waterfall fairly early on, this turned into a 7 hour, two peak adventure. There were a couple of delirious moments when we realised from the mountain we were currently climbing that we’d then have to summit the Stegastein peak again in order to get back to base. With dwindling water and wobbly legs, we resorted to a classic and played I spy for a good two hours, partly to remind us to look out for the elusive red dots which would hopefully lead us in the right direction.
After a late lunch of more buns at the top, we then took a stray path on the way back down, adding another hour or so to the journey. But the views were epic, the weather was glorious and pizza awaited so what’s not to love!
Said pizza was eaten in Flåm, the next town along, at a bus stop. But a pretty beautiful bus stop.
And there ended our Scandi adventure. Troll souvenirs acquired, we bus-ed back to Bergen where we spent the final few hours before our flight back at the Nordness pool.
Norway, we’ll be back!
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