NORWAY: AURLANDFJORD

At the end of our ride on the Flam Railway was the beautiful and truly magnificent Aurlandfjord. Our group hopped on a little cruising boat and started on our next adventure.

We had a very friendly escort for much of our journey:

Where the cliffs didn't drop straight down into the water, there were lush green valleys with scattered homes and buildings.  I had to wonder where the residents of these homes shop--no Costco or Target in sight--and what is it like in winter?

But the really spectacular part of this mini-cruise was the waterfalls.  I think we snapped about 500 pictures of one waterfall after another, from long thin streams of water to torrential cataracts.  It was pretty hard not to post them all, but I'm not sure this blog has enough memory, so here is just a sampling:

  Sometimes they even came in triplicate:

It was hard work being surrounded by such a magnificent, glorious landscape, but we found our ways to deal with it:

After three hours or so on the boat, we reluctantly disembarked and climbed onto our bus for the long ride back to Oslo. That vista wasn't too shabby either:

I think in the short time we were there, we really came to love the beautiful mountains and fjords of Norway: