We landed in Bergen on a grey afternoon with the kind of rain that Europe's wettest city is famous for, and by the time we'd checked into the Hotel Norge and walked up the Fløibanen funicular, it had cleared into the most lovely evening. Mount Fløyen gives you the whole town at once: the red and cream waterfront, the seven mountains ringing it, and the harbour going gold. We rode back down in the dusk and ate fish pie at Frk. Schmidt, a tiny gastropub with penguins on the walls and a blackboard menu. The fish pie is crisp on top and soft underneath, and the reindeer sirloin with lingonberries was the dish I kept thinking about on the flight home.
The next morning a walking tour took us past Bryggen's crooked wooden warehouses and into the Hanseatic history that made this city rich. Afterward we bought a paper cone of boiled shrimp at the Fish Market and peeled them on a harbour bench, which is apparently what locals do. Lunch was Søstrene Hagelin's fish soup, a recipe that has barely changed since 1929, served at a counter by people who clearly don't need to be told how good it is. We finished the afternoon in the Nøstet warehouse district, where Arven, Norway's oldest gold and silver workshop, lets you watch goldsmiths through a glass wall. Jessica made a silver necklace. I made a mess of mine and was proud of it anyway.
Friday was the marquee day. The drive south ran through tunnels and past the Tvindefossen waterfall, which we caught from the roadside, and then we boarded the electric boat for the Nærøyfjord. It is seventeen kilometres of sheer cliffs, and at some points the walls are so close that the boat's engine seems louder than the water. We stayed on the top deck with our lunch from the Flåm Bakeri and kept quiet for most of it. Just past Undredal we stopped in a village of about sixty people and several hundred goats, where a shop sells the brown and white goat cheese the whole country seems to know about. From there the road climbs to Stegastein, a platform that juts out 650 metres above the Aurlandsfjord. Standing on it at golden hour, with nothing between your shoes and the water, is a feeling I can't really describe.
The Flåm Railway the next morning is one of those things you have to ride to believe. It climbs 860 metres through twenty tunnels, stopping at the Kjosfossen waterfall, which is so close to the tracks that the spray reaches the carriage. Then we drove through the 24.5-kilometre Lærdal Tunnel and came out at Vøringsfossen, a 182-metre drop with a footbridge that feels like it's hanging over nothing. Our last night was at Hotel Ullensvang, where the indoor pool runs through an 88-metre channel to an infinity pool that spills toward the Hardangerfjord. Dinner at Lofthus Ekspedisjon was stone-oven pizza on a dock, with local Hardanger cider that turned out to be the best either of us had ever had.
We came home through the Hardanger Bridge and back to Bergen for one more night. The last dinner was walnut pesto pasta at Løvetann, and the last thing I did was eat a reindeer sausage at Trekroneren, a stand that has been serving since 1978. Norway is expensive, and we knew that going in, but I don't think I would have traded a single kilometre of that road for anything.
Reflection: Six nights, two fjords, and more waterfalls than I expected to find in one country. Norway rewards people who are willing to be in the car for a few hours a day, and every one of those hours paid off.