The Internet service is somehow defective in the Heimly Pensionat. Last night I tried to contact our hotel in Oslo to tell them that we would be arriving late. However, there was no way to locate their wireless router — but only on Android or Windows devices! It was working fine on iPhones. The clerk rebooted the router, and then it worked for a while, long enough that I could send an email to the hotel, but not well enough to post the pictures on the blog. After rebooting the Apple devices lost their wireless signa, but after about 15 minutes the system reverted back to its original configuration — Apple only!
I’ve never experienced this kind of behaviour on wireless before. Because we were worried about the very late arrival in Oslo (almost 11 pm) the hotel clerk tried to phone for us, but all he got was a busy signal. I hoped that the email had got through!
This morning the desk clerk tried agian, got through right away, and confirmed that our late arrival was ok. That was a relief.
We then stored our luggage at the hotel and went hiking, in the rain and wind, towards the Flam church. This is an old wooden structure, built sometime in the 1600’s, right beside the river. And yes, Arden, it had a very interesting cemetary surrounding the church on all sides. After a brief view inside the open church, we sat in the front porch and ate our lunch. We were happy to be out of the rain!
On the way back we stopped at a small water mill grindstone. The building was open, but not in use. I was surprised that the large grindstone was incredibly easy to turn. It must be very, very smooth and I guess is lubricated by the flour that sits between the two stones.
Farther along on the way back we passed a large waterfall. There is a trail that you can hike up to it, but it was quite muddy, and we were tired enough that we didn’t get more than a hundred metres up the trail before we turned back.
We had an early supper/late lunch in one of the restaurants at the dock. There were many tour busses parked in town, and three cruise ships (not the same ones that were here yesterday) yet there were not many people in the stores and shops. I guess most of them must have been out on boats travelling the fjord.
We left Flam on the Flamsbana railway. It is very beautiful along the valley with many waterfalls. At the largest one, Kjos, a Norwegian siren “sings” to you from the rocks. A bit tacky, but at least not an animated Disney caricature!
After the falls the railway hits its steepest part, and spirals and tunnels through to the top of the mountain at Myrdal. We got off, along with 20 or 30 others waiting for the train to Oslo.
However we soon found that it was about 40 minutes late, because of a power failure. When we did finally get on the train we had a smooth trip into Oslo, though we had to stop a couple of times to wait for switching, I imagine as we were off schedule. It seemed like most of the freights were shunted to sidings to wait for us though, so we went pretty straight through.
The top of the mountain is quite flat, but at about 1200 m there was still a lot of snow and the lakes were largely ice covered. It was very interesting topography, barren and arctic like with no trees. We did pass through one ski resort, though it is now closed as there isn’t enough snow left to ski.
As we dropped down into Oslo we saw more and more farms, and very pretty countryside. It is quite heavily forested with evergreens, interspersed with small farms.
At last we got to Oslo, just before mid-night. The security guard in the central station recommended that we take a taxi to our hotel, which we had been planning to do, and so it was a short ride of about 5 minutes to the Anker Hotel.
This is a very interesting hotel. It is the cheapest we’ve had so far on this trip, but it also the largest room, and the first with a true double bed, not two twins. It is right beside a fairly busy street, but on the seventh floor even with the window open we were so tired that we quickly went to sleep.