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Not to be outdone, I am continuing my trip by public transport. Thanks to the extreme kindness of friends to whom I will be eternally indebted, the removal of my car to Oslo has been arranged. I am now sitting in a small cafe waiting for my lunch, and the bus to Åndalsnes which leaves at 1pm.
The bus trip to the ferry took an hour, with a photo stop at a waterfall. We then took a ten minute ferry ride, and met up with the bus to Åndalsnes. The scenery became increasingly dramatic as we approached Trollstigen. I'm not sure if the name Trollstigen refers to a particular place or the road, but we stopped at somewhere the driver announced as Trollstigen for twenty minutes. Here there is a kind of tourist outpost, with a museum, some cafes and numerous souvenir shops. It is all surrounded by jagged mountains, and just down the road were some rapids that wound their way into the valley.
I felt a pang of regret as we reached the part of the road that wound down the mountainside. The views were superb, but when I had first seen a photo of this road in my Lonely Planet I decided there and then that I would drive along this route. It was not to be. Perhaps I will return to this place someday. In any case I got a good view from the coach window. From up there I frequently had a view over the precipice to the levels of road below. Out beyond were green mountains stretching away into the distance.
I arrived in Åndalsnes to find that the bus to Ålesund where I planned to go next was not for several hours. So I decided to skip it for now and go directly to the city of Trondheim. I am now waiting in the station for the train. From the price of the ticket, I am not so sure that travel by public transport will work out any cheaper than travel by car.
The train journey was quite relaxing. It's much harder to take in the scenery on the train because everything goes by so fast. But it got me to Trondheim where I had a twenty minute walk to the Inter-Rail Centre. This is quite a cool place to stay. The dorm rooms are rather large and reminiscent of a WWII hospital with rows of cast iron beds, but there is an excellent adjoining cafe that stays open late and is where I got a beer and a pizza and met up with a couple of girls from Portugal and an American girl taking a tour of Europe.
It seems the locals also frequent the place on account of the cheap beer, and a group of Norwegians invited us to their table. We all ended up going out into town until about three am. Much fun!
There is a strange quality to the light this far North. It never gets dark, and in the evening the light is very yellow and the shadows are long.