A week in and around Bergen, Norway...and over to the Shetlands.

What a delightful town Bergen is. About 300,000 people live here, scattered amongst the hill and island suburbs. A tourist mecca for visiting cruise ships in the short summer season. As we had arrived a month earlier than planned we changed our flight arrangements to the Shetlands, serviced the bikes and did some touristy trips.
The highlight was a full on day trip called "Norway in a nut Shell". This included a ride on the highest railway in Northern Europe called the "Bergen Railway", transferring to the world famous Flam mountain railway, a boat trip down a fiord and a hairy ride down a mountain road in a bus.
Our accomodation for the week was with Tom and whilst this was a fair distance out of town, the fantastic Bybann light rail operated every 10 minutes and took us right into the centre of town.
It is incredible to think that the 13th July marked the half way point in time of our journey!!
Our changed travel plans involved a flight to Aberdeen and a 14 hour overnight ferry ride back up to Lerwick in the Shetlands. All went very smoothly, including a very quick 30 minute reassemble of the bikes at the ferry terminal. We arrived a little jaded at 7.30am to a sunny Shetland day anticipating exploring more of the islands over the coming week.

Fish market in Bergen

Bergen waterfront Bryggen- old town

Bryggen narrow streets

Bryggen

City park

Bob the American juggler- street theatre

View of downtown Bergen from top of vernicular railway

Watch out for the Trolls in the woods...!!

Bergen's vernicular railway

On one of the many fiords

Mountain river

Up on the snow line above Flam

looking back up to the top of the Flam railway, note the winding road.

Flam rail carriage ( enlarge to read info on side of carriage)

At Flam station

Old diagram of the altitude on Flam railway

Flam

Fiord out of Flam

Fiord out of Flam

Fiord out of Flam

Descending winding road

...and again

...and again, still a way to the valley floor