Flåm and the Flåm Railway

When I woke up this morning we were getting ready to dock in Flåm and, as I looked out from the balcony, I was met with the tug boat, which is a lot bigger than it looks!!

The water was so calm and the weather looked a little better, so were were hoping for a good day. 

We had two trips booked for Flåm, however with the Captain having changed the itinerary we noticed that our first tour was due to come back to the ship at the same time as our railway trip was about to start.  On checking at reception we found out (along with other passengers) that it was no longer possible to combine both trips so we had to choose which one we wanted to do.  We chose the railway so had to forgo the trip to the mountain farm, which was a bit disappointing.  However, they did refund our trip very quickly into our on board account.  As we now had some free time we had a leisurely breakfast and then disembarked for a wander around Flåm itself.  We saw that one of the attractions featured was a little mini chuff chuff train, so we booked ourselves onto that and it took us for a spin around the town and countryside, which was very pleasant.

This is Thomas the chuff chuff train

Saga Sapphire docked in Flåm

After some shopping and a general look around, we boarded the ship for lunch and then got ourselves ready for our Flåm Railway trip which would take us past the Kjosfossen Waterfall where the mythical figure of the Huldra appears and attempts to lure men away - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huldra   This is a very fast running waterfall and there's lots of spray so you do get a bit wet on alighting the train to take photos.  Luckily, I had a cloth with me as I had to keep wiping the camera lens after every shot, but I still had droplets of water showing on almost every photo I took!!

Kjosfossen Waterfall

The Huldra

The Huldra

After the stop here we travelled on to the next stop which took us to the Vatnahalsen Hotel for coffee and waffles.  We took a short walk while here and found that many travellers had left little cairns along the pathways, so I left one too in memory of my Aunt Alice, who was a very special lady in my life.

Cairn

My cairn in memory of my Aunt Alice

After a very pleasant stop here, we boarded the train once more and travelled back to Flåm, stopping once more at the waterfall for more photo opportunities.  One view on the way back was particularly stunning - I think it almost looks like a toytown village

Once back in Flåm we boarded the Saga Sapphire once more for the sailaway party and I took some last photos as we sailed off to our next destination, Olden.

That night on board we tried the Pole to Pole Restaurant which we found to be just as good as the Verandah.  We were seated beside triplet sisters and we had an extremely good night chatting with them.  It was a different venue tonight too for the entertainment that we chose - the Drawing Room.  We knew that we had an early start in the morning for the trip we were doing from Olden, so it was off to bed early and the alarm set for 6.30 a.m.