Bergen had never been at the top of my list of places to go, but after coming back from Hallstatt in Austria, 11 months ago, it made me realise how amazing the autumn was for nature type breaks. So, a trip involving hiking, zip wiring and biking around the mountains and fjords, became a higher priority.
It’s the end of September (2023), I have 2 days in Bergen and 2 days in Voss (about an hour away from Bergen), before heading over to Sweden and the arctic circle!
I plan on lots of hiking, tasting the local cuisine (fish and reindeer hot dogs), avoid the rain as much as possible and also enjoy the historic nature of this city.
Packing for this trip wasn’t easy, the weather is still quite mild and with hiking I am doing I was hoping to get by with shorts and hoodies! I haven’t worn jeans or anything other than shorts on my legs since the start of the summer. However, I know that it will be much colder when crossing over into Sweden and up to the artic circle. I had packed the night before, but as I woke up on the day I was due to travel, saw on Instagram that Kiruna (the city I’m visiting in Sweden) had their first snowfall. So my suitcase needed a rethink!
Some facts: Bergen is the second biggest city in Norway (after Oslo) and is located in the West. It’s the rainiest city in Europe, receiving around 240 days of rain a year.
Autumn 2023 
4 DaysI arrive at around 3pm on a Thursday afternoon, it’s the end of September and actually very mild. I leave my things at the hotel and head out (wearing shorts, but a fairly thick hoodie). I’ve not worn jeans yet since May, so shorts it is! My hotel (Scandic Torget Bergen) is right on the marina opposite Bryggen.
Bryggen is a UNESCO world heritage site, a bunch of old wooden buildings dating back to the 12th century. The buildings are the picture postcard shot of Bergen, so obviously I head here first! Out of the 20 or so units, they are all mostly selling touristy gifts and Christmas decorations. But still pretty all the same.
I also headed back here later in the same evening as I was hoping to see it all lit up, disappointed as they don’t light it up at night! There are a couple of cafes and bars here (too late in the season for the tables on the outside to be full).
There is a popular kiosk not far from the Marina called 3 Kroneren. It was featured many times during my research, and here you can buy the traditional Norwegian reindeer hot dog, it’s typically served with lingonberries, mustard, and onions. It really was so good! I nearly went back for a second! Maybe tomorrow…
Update: I did, and ordered exactly the same again, they are just delicious!
Right opposite my hotel is the fish market, there is an outside market in the day selling fresh fish and small cooked fish dishes, and there are also the inside markets which has seating and more of a restaurant type vibe. Although a little pricy, I wanted to have a lovely fish meal for my first evening of this two-week trip.
I had the fish soup which was lovely and creamy, followed by a fillet salmon, and it was the nicest salmon I’ve ever tasted. Cooked beautifully, with a sort of mustard mashed potato, asparagus and I ordered some extra fries. With a small glass of white wine, it came to around £65.
I took the funicular up to mount Fløyen, there wasn’t a sunset but I got there just in time to see some daylight and stayed for around 45 minutes.
The view over Bergen was stunning, and seeing this city lit up was just brilliant. I say city, because it is, but really it feels like a small fishing town.
The next day after spending an hour or so in the morning walking around the city, I wanted to do this popular hike between the two mountains. There is a bus near the fish market that takes you to the Ulriken cable car. Once up there you can take various routes. I decided to do the 5 hour hike to the next mountain, Fløyen.
What an epic fail! The driver on the bus to the cable car said that it was an easy route, he said it was well sign posted! Wrong! There was virtually no signposts and the start of it was actually quite hard. There are no proper paths and very difficult to navigate up and down the rocks, let alone know if you’re going in the right direction.
I did get lost and ended up going in the opposite direction, on the wrong side of the mountain!
The route took me back to the top where is started. Oh well, I took the cable car back down. Was two full hours hiking, and to be honest it was enough! The views were great, it got little rainy in parts but nothing too horrendous.
I was wearing shorts and the lady on the bus asked me if I had anything warmer! I had waterproofs in my bag, but it wasn’t that cold and once you get walking you soon work up a sweat!
It was around a day and a half I spent in Bergen, and as much as I enjoyed it, it was enough. The only museum that interested me was the Leprosy Museum and it had already closed for the season. Other than that, once you’ve seen one fishing heritage museum, you’ve pretty much seen them all. Seeing the harbour and Bryggen was a must, I went to the peaks of both Fløyen and Ulriken, had a lovely fish meal and tasted the reindeer hotdog (twice in the end)! So, I was fairly pleased with what I did but, as I write this on the second evening, I feel ready to move on tomorrow for the next part of the trip. Voss…
How did I end up in Voss? Well… One of the top things to do in this part of Norway is a day trip called “Norway in a Nutshell”, where you take a trip on one of the most beautiful train tracks and steepest in the world. Then you pair that with a short fjords boat trip. This is the Flåm railway, and Voss is roughly halfway between Bergen and Flåm, so having already done 2 nights in Bergen, I decided to do an evening in and day in Voss, which is roughly half-way between Bergen and Flåm.
As a member of Scandic hotels, this largely dictated where I stayed, and they had opened a fairly new hotel here, Scandic Voss. As with most Scandic hotels, this one looked quite funky and smart, it has a sauna with views looking out onto Voss lake and the mountains beyond, a grill and cocktail bar with a menu that looked really nice, and best of all, one of the entrances of the hotel opens onto the railway platform! So the location was certainly 10 out of 10.
Voss is also known as the extreme sports capital of Norway, because of the amount of sports activities you can do here, such as water rapids, water repelling, hiking and gliding.
I had originally intended to go water repelling whilst on my stay here (abseiling down the side of a waterfall), or white water rafting, but they didn’t have these activities on during the day I was here and with train times and the fact that Voss was a mere 24 hour stop-over, it was pretty hard to arrange anything.
But there is a gondola up the mountain and so I had hoped to take a bike up to the top and ride down. This didn’t go to plan. The bike was taken to the top, but due to rain and dangerous conditions (my leg has the blood and scrapes to prove it) the bike ride down wouldn’t have been advisable. So, it got taken back down in the gondola the way it came. All in all, that was £80 wasted (ouch). With not much else to do in Voss, luckily my Scandic hotel had the best Sauna, with full height glass windows looking out onto Voss, and even better I got the Sauna to myself for an hour. That warmed me up and cheered me up.
One of the most popular day trips from around the Bergen/Voss area is to go to Flåm which hosts, supposedly, the most beautiful train journey in the world (and the steepest).
The train journey starts at the top in Myrdal and descends to Flåm valley (roughly one hour). From Flåm you can then get a 2-hour fjords cruise. The official name of this famous combo is “Norway in a nutshell”. I wanted to do this, however I knew (and read as much) that this train would be very touristy, and jam packed, so I got the train to Myrdal, and instead of going on the Flåm railway, I booked a zipwire which took me about a 3rd of the way down the valley, and hired a bike for the remaining distance down.
You pretty much go down the mountain side by side with the train track, so you see exactly the same things, but instead of seeing it through a window on a jam packed train, you are physically in the middle of it all. You also have the ability to stop whenever you like and take pictures.
Even at the end of September it was quite mild, luckily it was a fairly sunny and dry day. If you are fit and able I highly recommend bike hire instead of the train, it took about one and a half hours (15km) but 80% of that you are not even cycling because it’s all downhill, and you constantly have your hand on the breaks as to not go too fast, so it’s not strenuous by any means. I stopped a number of times to take photos.
So, as I mentioned above, the official name for the combination of the Flåm railway and a fjords cruise is “Norway in a Nutshell”, and you can book all of this on various websites. But if you’re happy to research it all yourself you can book the various legs of this journey separately and save some money. I did this anyway with doing the zipline and bike hire instead, but I did do the fjords cruise. As you’ll know from my other blog pages, I have an love/hate relationship with boat/canal cruises, because they are mostly boring. Once you’ve been on the thing for 10 minutes, you’ve seen all you’re going to see!
With the exception of the Amsterdam canal cruise, they have all disappointed me (Vienna, Helsinki, Paris even Stockholm, they were all rubbish!). But this was the fjords… and was it any different? As much as I hate to say it, it too was boring! Sure, that photo above is pretty good (even though the weather had turned cold and miserable by this point), but honestly, this is all you could see for 2 whole hours! I managed to stay outside on the top deck for the first hour and 15 minutes but it became too cold and windy.
12 months ago when this autumnal trip was just a loose plan, it was a trip to Stockholm (and possibly Kiruna), it did not include Norway. But I am so glad I made this into a bigger trip and came to Bergen and Voss. Also pleased I came in September, for the most part I spent the days walking around in shorts, it was so pleasant and at no point did anywhere feel packed with tourists. Bergen was lovely, although I couldn’t have spent any more than a day and a half there, unless you do all the museums there is only so many times you can walk around the marina and Bryggen. Voss was a lovely little town, I just wish my day there had been better weather, and Flåm also great, so pleased I got to zipwire and bike down the mountain instead of the train, I really felt like I got the best out of my time. All in all, I highly recommend 3 or 4 days here and absolutely would suggest my itinerary for anyone looking for a good mix of city and nature.
My time here ends at Bergen airport, about to catch a flight to Stockholm to then get the overnight train to Kiruna in the arctic circle.
