On July 7, I took the train ride I’d been so looking forward to.  The train ride that was one of the main reasons I created my ScandiRAYvia adventure.

The first the segment of the journey took me out of the urban bustle of Oslo and into the Norwegian countryside.  The scenery was gorgeous northern farm with endless postcard-ready red barns.

Then we began climbing.

And climbing!

Eventually we made our way to the town of Myrdal, where we changed trains and began our steep descent on the legendary Flamsbana.

The Flamsbana is one of the steepest train journeys in the world that runs on normal tracks.  It was gorgeous and a bit hair-raising.

Unfortunately, it was a terrible day for taking photos.  Try taking good pictures from a moving train.  Every now and then they’d stop at a particularly nice view to let us take photos, but the crush of the crowd really kept that from being a viable option.

So what was arguably the most beautiful day of my trip is the one I have no good visual recording of.  Sorry about that.

But trust me, it was FABulous.

However, at the end of the day, we arrived in beautiful Flåm, the tiny village at the bottom of the mountains and at the foot of a large branch of the Sognefjord, the largest fjord in Norway.

To compensate for the lack of photos for this beautiful rail journey, here’s two more shots from Oslo:

Next:  The Fjords, for realz!!