Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Alesund

Greetings!

Bus - Bus - Bus on Ferry - Bus - Ferry. If there were an award for the best coordinated sea and land crossing involving busses and ferries, we would nominate the Fjord1 company on the route from Bergen to Alesund. The Bergen ticket clerk, two ferry boat stewards, and two bus drivers, were all so considerate and well-organized. I know that these people have to deal with much harsher weather (it is summer after all), but rain-slicked mountain roads and somewhat stormy seas do cause delays. But modern communications, excellent equipment, and personnel with great attitudes, all contributed to a day which we enjoyed immensely.

And it made me happy to see a transportation system which was used by both tourists making connections, but local folks just getting around. I enjoy using public transporation while traveling. But the costs and the route designs in most systems result in two very different worlds of users. There isn't any room out here economically for separate systems; both would fail. So Fjord1 has come up with fairly low cost, well-designed and comfortable busses and ferries that are on-time and very enjoyable. Hooray for them!

Arriving in Alesund around 5pm, we spent the next couple of hours checking into the hotel, asking questions at the city information office, and enjoying a good dinner at a local restaurant (mine was barbecued spare ribs, Pat's was billed as moussaka - but turned out to be different but excellent).

We've plenty of materials about what Alesund and the surrounding area has to offer, and the room at the Radisson looks out onto a beautiful sky (the clouds are parting) and sunset. Tomorrow is probably a trip to the bird island, but it could be more city walking. We'll be here until Friday, then the bus to Oslo.

Here is a link to all of the photos we took today: Alesund

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow! This was trully an amazing, educating post! Thank you soo much for posting! :)