I do have one last port of call to share from our cruise around Norway back in September, and it was everyone’s collective favorite so I had to be sure to include it.

Mr. Q and I had been to Flåm, Norway once before, and that time we opted to walk from the port up to the 1670’s church that is about 1.5 miles up into the valley.  We had a beautiful sunny day for a walk on that trip.

But this time around my sister really wanted to take a ride on the scenic Flåm Railway.

I had done a little bit of research for our first trip to Flåm, so I knew that the ship’s shore excursions that included the train were ridiculously overpriced.  I also knew that the train station was literally right there next to where the ship would dock, so it would be super easy to do on our own.  I also knew that you could easily buy the train tickets online, or so I thought.

What I didn’t know was that you’d better buy those tickets way ahead of time before they sell out.  We went online about a month before our trip only to find that there were no tickets available for the time slot we needed (clearly the cruise ships buy up big blocks of tickets).  So then we decided we’d better book the ship’s shore excursion despite its inflated price tag because, as my sister put it, this was ‘the one thing’ she most wanted to do in the entire trip!

So we signed into the Holland America website and went to book the excursion for the train, and … as you may have already guessed … it was also sold out!  At least the basic version with just the train journey was sold out.  There was one last excursion available that included the train, but also lunch at a hotel, followed by some free time in Voss and then a bus trip return to the ship.  The price tag?  A whopping $329 per person.  Yikes!

But … as I said … it was ‘the one thing’ my sister really wanted to do.  So we all signed up for it.

So, was it worth it?  Absolutely not.  Would I do it again?  Absolutely not.  Was it still one of the best things we did on the entire cruise?  Yes, it was.  Let me explain.

The train ride was pretty much a bust.  It was pouring rain, the windows were foggy, and really only those people lucky enough to have a window seat could really see anything.

My sister managed to get a few blurry photos through the window.

And we all got out at the mid-way point to see the Kjosfoss waterfall, but it was definitely a case of hopping off the train, fighting the crowd to get a quick photo, and then getting back on the train before you got totally drenched.

I was impressed that the forest spirit, or Huldra, was still up there singing and dancing despite the rain.  See her in the red dress on the right side of the water, about 2/3 of the way up?

We changed trains at Myrdal Station and continued on to Voss, Norway where we were all herded into a hotel for our lunch.  The lunch was served buffet style in a room that closely resembled a high school gymnasium.  There had to be at least 200 people there, if not more.  The line of people waiting to get food stretched all the way around the perimeter of the room.  I don’t think the food was all meant to be cold, but it certainly was.

Since the lunch process took so much time, our ‘free time’ to explore Voss was cut pretty short.  It would have been cool to take the gondola in Voss up to Mount Hangur, but we didn’t have time for that.

We did enjoy some pretty views of Vangs Lake though, where we took a quick group selfie.

Next we boarded a bus for the return trip to the port.

This part of the trip was described as follows by our cruise line, Holland America, “Brace yourself for the serpentine bends of the Stalheimskleivane — the steepest road in Norway — skirting the Sivle and the Stalheim Waterfalls.”

However, we didn’t actually take that route.  Apparently that serpentine road has been permanently closed to vehicles since 2021, so that was a bit of false advertising on the part of Holland America.  My sister did snap a photo of the road as we passed by on the train earlier in the day …

I’m sure there were many people on this excursion that were really disappointed about this, but not me.  I’ll admit, I was relieved.  I was really dreading heading down that road in a big tour bus, it looks terrifying to me.

Instead, the return trip by bus ended up being my favorite part of the entire day.  The bus was quite comfortable with huge windows, and the views along the way were outstanding, even if we weren’t on a serpentine road.

There were small waterfalls absolutely everywhere, I suppose because of all the rain.

We also stopped off at one of the larger waterfalls, the Tvindefossen, where we had just enough time to take a few photos and possibly purchase a souvenir or a snack.

Our route followed the Nærøy river and we caught glimpses of it here and there.

We also made a 2nd stop at Gudvangen, which was really lovely.

We actually even started to see a little blue sky at this point.

We arrived back at the port just in time to do a little bit of shopping before the ship sailed.

After reading this description of our shore excursion in Flåm, you must be thinking that it had to have been my least favorite port on our cruise.  But this area of Norway is just so beautiful that I absolutely loved it despite the bad weather, and the bad shore excursion.

If we could do it over again, we would rent a car in Flåm and drive that route along the river on our own.  We could stop somewhere for a really nice lunch, and make photo stops whenever we wanted to.  All for a fraction of the over $1,200 we paid for 4 people to take that excursion!  Well, live and learn.  If we ever find ourselves in Flåm again we’ll know better!