Norwegian Fjord excursion options?

[MTV43]

Our first time cruising Norwegian Fjord early May on Jewel of the Sea with stops at: Olden, Flam, Geiranger, Alesund, Molde.  There are many excursion choices, we narrow down to what we want to do but would like to hear your options so we can avoid exploring similar view at each port. 

 

Olden: Briksdal Glacier Shutte Bus with Troll car or Loen Lake and Kjenndal Glacier in the morning? Will the view from Lake similar to what we see on cruise during cruise in/out of port?  will do the Lift in the afternoon with weather permits.  Is this tender port? we are the only cruise in port that day arrives at 8:00am.   If it is tender, do we have enough time to meet our independent tour at 9:30am?

Flam: we decide not to do the Train ride, will take shuttle bus to Stegastein viewpoint. Do we need to book this shuttle in advance?

Geiranger: Mount Dalnisbba and Eagle Road.  We are keen in landscape photography, is this good option if weather permits? is this also a tender port? we dock at 10:00 am.  Do we have enough time to meet our independent tour at 11:00 am. 

Alesund: just walk around town and up to view point

Molde: Adventurous Altantic Ocean Road.

 

Thank in advance for your replies?

 

 

[edinburgher]

There have been many previous threads on all of these ports and i suggest you read them for information,suggestions and some answers to the questions you are asking..

 

To find them without back paging, a quick and easy way is to go to the general NORTHERN EUROPE AND BALTIC SEA forum, but NOT to any individual thread.  IN TURN insert each name(including Dalsnibba) in the empty search box under your user name, hit the little spy glass and in under a minute every thread containing that word will appear ready for you to read.

 

Lovely itinerary, enjoy.

Edited March 16, 2023 by edinburgher

[kitkat343]

On 3/16/2023 at 5:45 AM, MTV43 said:

Our first time cruising Norwegian Fjord early May on Jewel of the Sea with stops at: Olden, Flam, Geiranger, Alesund, Molde.  There are many excursion choices, we narrow down to what we want to do but would like to hear your options so we can avoid exploring similar view at each port. 

 

Olden: Briksdal Glacier Shutte Bus with Troll car or Loen Lake and Kjenndal Glacier in the morning? Will the view from Lake similar to what we see on cruise during cruise in/out of port?  will do the Lift in the afternoon with weather permits.  Is this tender port? we are the only cruise in port that day arrives at 8:00am.   If it is tender, do we have enough time to meet our independent tour at 9:30am?

Flam: we decide not to do the Train ride, will take shuttle bus to Stegastein viewpoint. Do we need to book this shuttle in advance?

Geiranger: Mount Dalnisbba and Eagle Road.  We are keen in landscape photography, is this good option if weather permits? is this also a tender port? we dock at 10:00 am.  Do we have enough time to meet our independent tour at 11:00 am. 

Alesund: just walk around town and up to view point

Molde: Adventurous Altantic Ocean Road.

 

Thank in advance for your replies?

 

 

I am a little concerned with your sail date in early may.  The road to Dalsnibba is seasonal, and doesn't open until the big avalanche (usually mid  may - early June).  We had to sail leaving May 18th because we had a 2 year old with us, and Cunard is the only line that took children that young in the kids club and the May 18th cruise was the only Cunard cruise that year that visited both Flam and Geiranger.  We missed the road to Dalsnibba being open by just two days, which was a bit of a disappointment.  Hopefully you will have better luck.   

 

It would be helpful if the cruise lines adjusted their itineraries and put Geiranger last on May cruises, since Road 63 opened the on our last port day, when we were in Bergen, but they may have logistical reasons for leaving the port stop in Geiranger earlier. We were told in Flam that the waterfalls all looked gorgeous in May because they are currently filled with snow runoff. This will melt, and then the waterfalls won’t be nearly as impressive later in the season so that might be one reason to choose a May cruise.

 

Geiranger is an amazing stop for a landscape photographer, and even without Dalsnibba the other viewing platforms are amazing (assuming the weather is clear enough for good photographs).

 

At the end of the tour, we decided to stop for lunch in Geiranger. We were a little scared to stop at Braserie Posten, since it is in a tourist trap location right near the cruise ship terminal, but the yelp reviews were positive and the food was excellent. There is seating with a beautiful view of the harbor in the back of the restaurant. We went through two bowls of fish soup, since the kids were so happy eating all of it. It is a very short walk from this restaurant to the dock, so this is a nice way to conclude your day in Geiranger. 

 

 

You should get another opinion on this, but we easily did two tours in Flam, so if you have a normal length port day, I think you will easily be able to combine Stegastein and one other activity.  We really liked the Flam railway, but that's up to you.  We did the railway in the morning, and then had had an excellent tour in the afternoon led by Fjord Safari.  We were traveling with kids, so we chose the visit to a beautiful small Norwegian town of Undredal and a goat farm, but I think Fjord Safari is primarily known for its more adventurous tours.  Our tour guide was excellent, so I would recommend you see what else they offer.  

 

We were extremely fortunate to learn that the Loen Skylift opened three days prior to our arrival in Olden. I was a bit anxious about the logistics of visiting a brand new attraction with small children, and the owner of Olden Adventures was very patient and reassuring about the logistics of reaching the skylift. As it turned out, the weather was a bit rainy on the day we arrived, so there were very few crowds. It was still a very beautiful location, with a gorgeous viewing platform. On nice days, paragliders take off from the mountain (that happened the day before we arrived) and that must be spectacular to see if you are lucky enough to get good weather. The food in the restaurant was excellent, especially the sample platter of local meat. It’s unsurprisingly expensive, but the view is outstanding and the food delicious. 

The Loen Skylift is only a 6 km bus ride from Olden, so it isn’t very difficult to get there. Olden Adventures ( http://www.oldenadventure.com/ ) is running shuttles to the Loen Skylift, right next to their buses to the Biksdal Glacier so it would be very easy to travel to both attractions through Olden Adventures. 

 

You can also take a cab to the Loen skylift. It is a 40 minute ride to the Briksdal Glacier, so a cab there would probably be quite a bit more expensive.

The most economical option for getting to the Briksdal Glacier is a public bus that runs from June –August. The Norway tourist office stated that in the 2017 season the bus left Port Olden at 9:58 am, and departs Biksdal Glacier at 1:30 pm, and is currently listed as costing 132 NOK for each adult ticket. You might want to contact the tourist office to see if there is any way to purchase tickets ahead of time or if they can run additional buses if the first one is full.

 

The Briksdal Glacier has been hit hard by global warming, but the 40 minute bus ride there is quite scenic and lovely, as is the hike itself to the glacier so overall this excursion is a very good choice as long as you realize ahead of time that the most beautiful pictures online of the glacier showing lots of ice are not recent and don’t represent what you will see at the glacier. 

For travelers with young children or mobility issues, there are troll cars available for rent to reduce the length of your hike. These golf carts travel most of the way to the glacier, leaving you with a very pleasant and relatively flat 700 m walk. Since we didn’t expect my 2 year old to make it all the way to the glacier, my husband and 6 year old went ahead of us. To my surprise, my 2 year old slowly but steadily made the entire hike in the allocated time (they tell you what time to return to the platform to catch your return troll car). Reservations are required for troll cars in May and October, and recommended during the summer months (the troll car season runs from May-October). The only challenging thing is that they do request that you tell them what time you’d like to ride on the troll car, which is hard if you want to chose a time to do this excursion based upon the weather forecast (although it is completely understandable they ask you to pick a time, since otherwise there might be a lot of people trying to get on a troll car at one time and this would cause really long delays). I don’t know if the troll car operators are always flexible about the time of your reservation, but we changed our minds about what time to visit the glacier on the day we traveled since we wanted to visit the Loen skylift in the afternoon when the weather was scheduled to be better. I emailed the troll car operators at 9 am as soon as we got on the bus towards the glacier, and they had already switched my reservation by the time we arrived at the troll car office. We traveled in May, when things are less crowded so I don’t know if they will be able to accommodate a change in reservation time during the busy summer months. The troll car website where you can make your advance reservation is available at: http://www.oldedalenskysslag.com . 

 

Near where you pick up the troll car is a small café off the souvenir shop; they have excellent waffles. They are best freshly made, so if you have time keep an eye on the plate where they store the waffles and order them when everyone else bought up the older waffles. My family started off by ordering 4, and ended up eating 12 (the kids really loved them and since they’d just finished hiking to a glacier without a single complaint I wasn’t going to say no), so we were able to get a lot of fresh waffles. 

 

Because we traveled with a 2 and 6 year old,  we decided to visit Briskdal due to the availability of troll cars there.  I've read some nice reviews of Loen Lake and Kjenndal Glacier, but don't know enough to know if its better than the Brisksdal Glacier.   

 

Olden, Flam and Geiranger were my three favorite port stops on my cruise, so I really hope you have an amazing time!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 18, 2023 by kitkat343

[kitkat343]

Oh and I forgot to mention (and there's only a limited amount of time you can edit posts) none of these were tender ports for the Queen Elizabeth on my sailing.  There's a limited number of berths for each port, so if there are three ships in a harbor that can dock two ships one ship will tender, but I don't know how they determine which ships tender at each dock.  I think Flam can dock two ships, but I'm not certain.

Edited March 18, 2023 by kitkat343

[Senga]

I would be very surprised if you were able to book excursions this late for a May sailing.

[kaisatsu]

I’ve never been in Geiranger when the road to Dalsnibba was open (including a call in early June, thanks to late snow). I’ve never missed it, because the weather was never clear. No point heading up that high if the clouds are low!

 

I still enjoyed the views from Vesteråsfjellet and Løsta. On an overcast day, just getting up to a point like Flydalsjuvet will still offer nice scenery.

[debsjc]

We stopped in Alesund last year, and did this boat trip. It's just a ferry really, but the tourist office recommended it, and we loved it. The scenery was stunning, and the modern ferry was 3/4 empty, plus is was very inexpensive. The round trip was 2 hours 40 mins 

https://travellikethelocals.trekksoft.com/en_GB/activity/57137/rundtur-til-nordoyane

 

In Molde we rented a car, and drove the Atlantic road.

 

 

Edited March 21, 2023 by debsjc