20260606 Saturday, June 6, 2026 Scenic Oslo to Bergen Train Ride and Embarkation Viking Neptune in Bergen

20260606 Saturday, June 6, 2026 Scenic Oslo to Bergen Train Ride and Embarkation Viking Neptune in Bergen

Experiencing jet lag can sometimes be helpful if you have to get up super early after flying many time zones eastward.  In this case, we end up waking up at 3am, but since we had to wake up at 4:45am to prepare to check out of the hotel at 5:40am, this was convenient. 

 
There are about 120 Viking Neptune passengers who participated in the Oslo Scenic Train pre-cruise extension.  This made for a bit of confusion in the hotel lobby this morning.  There was a cart with paper bags, sandwiches, orange juice in bottles, single serving yogurt containers and a large tureen of coffee for a DIY breakfast take out station.  

It was a bit disorganized, but we did manage to grab breakfast bags for the train ride.  The sandwiches were oddly a pressed ham and cheese sandwich with lettuce and mayo, so more of a lunch sandwich, but when in Norway…. At least it wasn’t fermented fish pickled in lye. 

 
It was a short walk from the hotel to the rail station where we boarded our train.  The Bergensbanen runs from Oslo to Bergen on a regular schedule, and it makes up to 14 stops along the way to pick up and drop off passengers, so this is a commuter rail more than a scenic tourism train.  

The cars reflect this purpose.  The seating was functional but no nonsense, and equivalent to an airline premium economy seat or low end domestic business class with 2 by 2 seating arrangement on either side of the coach.  There is a shelf overhead, and very limited underseat storage.  There are 220v EU electrical outlets under the seats, but no USB power.  We were prepared this time and brought both a type F European plug adapter and a 65W USB multioutlet charger to keep our devices charged for the day. 

 
Unlike the Rocky Mountaineer, which had dome car seating for maximum sight seeing, these coaches just had standard passenger windows, which were not very clean or particularly large.  If you were seated by a window, you could get a decent view of your side of the tracks, but not the other side of the train.  It was possible to get a view out of the boarding door windows between cars, but these tended to get monopolized by people.  The other area that could provide viewing for photography was the dining car, which had windows on both sides of the train, but there were signs posted on every window urging people not to hog the windows and share the view. 

During the start of the trip, heading out of Oslo, the outskirts of town and suburbs were pretty unremarkable.  The vegetation is very similar to what we have in Western Washington, and outside of the city, there are lots of agricultural plots that are plowed regularly and in various stages of planting and growing.  Due to the more mountainous geography, the farm plots tend to be very hilly or restricted to relatively narrow valley floors.  

Further into the countryside, the views remain similar to western Washington or Southeastern Alaska in terms of geology and plants, although at higher altitudes, there is a predominance of pine forests instead of fir forests. 

 
As the train ascended in altitude, stubby birch trees supplanted the pines, and as the train headed into the mountains, snow fields emerged and trees disappeared altogether, replaced with bolder fields, moss and shrubs.  

At its highest altitude of over 4058’ above sea level, it is mostly snow fields, boulder fields and low tundra.  This was the most visually interesting portion of the journey because it was such a dramatic contrast to all the rest. 

Coming down past its peak, the geology and vegetation return, although descending into Bergen does take the train along what are clearly fjords. 

 
The trip takes about 7 hours, covering 496km, reaching a peak altitude of 1237m and passing through 182 tunnels.  Although the train is not optimized for tourist scenic travel, it does allow travelers to see parts of Norway that are inaccessible by any other transport method, and showcase the geographic and biologic diversity of Norway.  

A box lunch was provided.  This included one hot beverage, and bottled water, but no soft drinks.  Soft drinks and beer were available for purchase in the diner car.  

We were transferred from the Bergen train station to the ship by bus.  This took about 20 minutes.  Checking into the ship was pretty easy and quick, aside from the delay associated with having to go through security screening like at a TSA check point in the USA.  

When we had arrived, our friends Mark and Jan, and Doug and Sandy had boarded the ship a few hours earlier.  They had all arrived to Bergen earlier and had spent a day or two exploring the town and getting over jet lag.  They had all embarked on a ship’s orientation tour while we were getting unpacked.  

Doug and Sandy were able to snatch up reservations for Manfredi’s when they overheard another couple cancel their reservations for tonight at 7:30pm.  We ended up dining with Mark and Jan in the Restaurant, which requires no reservations and offers table menu service.  Most ended up ordering a special chicken breast entree while Ben opted for a regional lamb with cabbage dish.  

After dinner, Ben and Janet walked into Bergen to explore in advance of tomorrow’s organized tour.  

We concluded our evening watching a performance by Tor Jaran Apold, who is an acclaimed Norwegian violinist performing a number of arrangements of Nordic music which was quite good. 

 

The ship remains at dock in Bergen overnight. Tomorrow we have a bus tour of Bergen scheduled for 1pm.  The ship will set sail for Eidsdal, Norway (216 nautical miles) tomorrow at 3pm.  

20260605 Friday, June 5, 2026 A Day in Oslo

20260605 Friday, June 5, 2026 A Day in Oslo

As is common with jet lag, despite being extremely tired upon putting our heads down on the pillow, we both found ourselves wide awake at 3 a.m.  Ben decided to hit the fitness center when it opened at 5 a.m.  

Accessing the fitness center requires a fair bit of logistical finessing.  The Radisson Blu Plaza has 37 floors, but the elevators are split so some only service the floors above 16, and others only below 16.  The fitness center starts on the 32nd floor, where sauna rooms are located.  Then you have to climb a series of narrow spiral stairs to access the pool area, which apparently is on floor 34.  

The pool is narrow and long, and features a swimming current that can be activated with a button at the front of the pool, like an endless pool.  There is no hot tub, and just a few lounging chairs and a small changing area with lockers next to the pool.

From there, you have to ascend more narrow spiral stairs to get to the gym, which is at the very top of the building, which is more of an enclosed catwalk, into which gym equipment has been jammed.  

It is a very odd narrow and elongated space.  It must get unbearably hot in there when the sun is shining because it is like a greenhouse.  Fortunately, it was raining heavily outside when Ben was up there.  At the time, there were 3 other guys working out at that hour.

As difficult as it was to get up to the gym, it was even trickier to get back down because the exit doors lock behind you and there is no access to any floors from the stairs until you get to floor 26, so you have to go down more than 10 flights of stairs to get access back to the elevators.  And even if you get back into the elevators, you can only access the public areas such as the transfer floor 16, breakfast floor 2, and lobby 1.  Even on the transfer floor 16, you cannot select any hotel room floors other than the breakfast floor 2 and lobby 1.  Then you can access other room floors from the breakfast floor 2 or lobby 1 due to the computerized floor selection system.  

The breakfast buffet at the Radisson Blu Plaza in Oslo is a typical business class hotel breakfast brunch with a broad selection of hot and cold menu items, including some international fare.  They did have a waffle station right at the entrance to the breakfast area, which was quite remote from all the other food.  There was a selection of jams and butter there, but the Norwegian brown cheese (brunost) was situated with other cheeses and cold cuts.  There was also a featured Norwegian blue cheese and a bottle of cod liver oil.  Espresso drinks were available via automated machines.  

The weather did not appear favorable for our tours, as it was raining pretty steadily.  There were a lot of tour groups meeting in the lobby. We got assigned a Viking bus that was about 60-75% full, so there was plenty of room to spread around on the bus, but with the rain, it was hardly worth it to try to take photos through the rain-soaked windows.  

As the bus made its way through Oslo, our guide explained that Oslo is working on eliminating internal combustion engines within the city by 2030.  About 80-90% of all new car sales in Oslo are now electric vehicles.  Electric vehicles get privileged access to lanes and parking, although parking and private vehicle ownership is very expensive in general in Oslo.  Consequently, the vast majority of residents use public transportation.  

It is highly remarkable the lack of traffic or congestion within Oslo.  The streets are largely empty aside from a fleet of electric taxis, street trams, and buses. e-Scooters are the biggest hazard to pedestrians in Oslo.  There are dedicated lanes for bikes and scooters, but the scooters just seem to come out of nowhere and aren’t restricted to the bike and scooter lanes.  

Our Viking Oslo tour started with a drive to the Bygdøy Peninsula, where the Norwegian Royal farm and stables are located, as well as several museums.  When we were on a Princess Cruises Oslo excursion, we visited a Viking ship museum, which is now currently under remodeling and closed, and an outdoor museum of Norwegian country life.  

On this Viking excursion, we were instead taken to a museum dedicated to the polar exploration vessel Fram, and the experimental balsa raft vessels Kon-Tiki and Ra, which were used to test hypotheses on whether it was possible for Polynesians to have originated from South America, or if early peoples of the Caribbean might have originated from Europe or Africa, riding on ocean currents and winds.  

The Fram is completely enclosed within a cavernous building with museum exhibits around its periphery on 3 levels, and you can also explore within the ship itself, provided you can navigate your way through its narrow, irregular passageways and ladders.  You could see that the forward lounge in Viking’s current expedition class ships bears some inspiration from the configuration of the bow in the Fram, with its shape and diagonal anchor chain passages.  

The Fram was a wooden-hulled vessel equipped with both sails and a large diesel motor.  The propeller and rudder were designed to be retractable so that the vessel could be intentionally frozen into polar sea ice and survive, acting as a base of operations for explorers.  It pioneered shipboard use of a windmill for electrical generation.  

While it is not an ancient Viking vessel, it was a very interesting vessel to explore and learn about.  

Across the street from the Fram museum is the Kon-Tiki museum, featuring replicas of Moas from Easter Island (Rapanui) and replicas of the balsa rafts made famous by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, who sought to prove in 1947 that it was possible for people from Peru to have sailed to Polynesia.  Similar balsa rafts were also used in the 1970s to explore other possible human marine migration routes.  
It was certainly nice to be able to spend a few hours exploring these museums, especially since it was raining outside.  

From the museums, we drove to the Vigeland Sculpture Park, which features innumerable sculptures by Gustav Vigeland in marble and bronze. We had visited this on our prior Princess Cruises excursion when the weather was perfect, but today, it was raining pretty much the whole time, so it was a pretty quick walk-through tour.  

We returned to the hotel after 1 p.m. and were on our own for the rest of the afternoon.  

We walked a bit into Oslo and found a kebab shop for lunch after walking through the train station and adjacent mall.  We did find a very popular Los Tacos place that was just packed with locals, but couldn’t find any place to sit indoors and it was raining, so the outdoor seating was not suitable.  We got our Kebab special to go and headed back to the hotel room to get out of the rain and dry off.  

After naps, we did get back out into Oslo after the rain had stopped.  It was still a bit windy, but manageable.  We did walk to the Oslo Opera House and did manage to have dinner at the Los Tacos place, which was still very busy.  The food was good and the service was quick, so it’s not hard to see why it is so popular with locals.  

Our suitcases had to be put out by 9 p.m. for transport to the Viking Neptune.  We need to meet in the hotel lobby at 5:40 a.m. to walk to the train station for our scenic rail trip to Bergen tomorrow.  We’ll have to see what kind of take-out breakfast they manage to provide for us tomorrow.  

20260603-20260604 Wednesday June 3 to Thursday June 4, 2026. Heading to Norway for Viking Neptune Norway to Iceland Cruise

20260603-20260604 Wednesday June 3 to Thursday June 4, 2026. Heading to Norway for Viking Neptune Norway to Iceland Cruise

We begin another travel adventure today with a shuttle ride to Sea-Tac airport, but this time with friends.  Mark and Jan, who have been long time friends, decided to join our former neighbors Doug and Sandy on a Viking Neptune cruise from Norway to Iceland.  Mark and Jan rode in the airport shuttle with us today, while Doug and Sandy had left several days earlier to visit family in Sweden and tour Copenhagen before the start of the Norway Cruise. 

Mark and Jan were flying on a different airline, so we parted at the airport curb to head our separate ways to our flights.  We will all end up meeting up on the Viking Neptune on Friday June 5, although Doug and Sandy will start their Norway trip in Oslo and take the scenic train from Oslo to Bergen a day before we arrive in Oslo.  Mark and Jan will fly directly into Bergen a day earlier to spend an extra day exploring Bergen.  

Our Lufthansa flights left out of the South Satellite, which had a business class lounge called the Club at SEA.  This was conveniently adjacent to our boarding gate, but the lounge was small, crowded, dirty and showing its age badly with sagging, damaged chair cushions and ailing facilities including a broken coffee machine, so no espresso or coffee was available.  They did have sandwiches and Thai themed hot food including fried rice, curry soup and tofu curry, but the food was pretty lack luster and the snacks were very limited in variety.  This lounge would only earn a 2 star rating. But we did appreciate being able to get lunch there before our flight.

We flew from Seattle to Frankfurt and then from Frankfurt to Oslo on Lufthansa Airlines.  The business class seats in the Lufthansa Airbus A320 were not as nice as the business class seats on Delta Airlines Boeing 777, but they did lie flat and we did manage a few hours of sleep during our red-eye flights which left Seattle in the afternoon and arrived in Frankfurt the following morning.  The A320’s seats had 220vac power with universal outlets on the seat bases, but lacked any USB power ports.  We had not packed AC power bricks in our carry on luggage or backpacks, so we were not able to keep our devices charged, although a flight attendant did charge Ben’s iPhone while he slept with a charger at her workstation.  There were also no air vents in the business class cabin that could be adjusted for comfort.  The flight was a bit too warm and stuffy for us.  There was also an infant that periodically made her unhappiness known to everyone in the business class section during ascent and descent, as well as once or twice during the flight.  That little tike had some lungs on her, able to overpower the noise cancelling headsets.  

Food service on the flight was OK with a dinner and breakfast service.  The quality of the meal was a bit below Delta’s business class and far below Emirates business class, but satisfactory for our flight.  The blinds were drawn early in the flight and most of the flight was spent with the lights dimmed so passengers could get a few hours of sleep.  The flight was just under 9 hours in duration from Seattle to Frankfurt.  Ben watched “The Bride”, which was an interesting new take on the Bride of Frankenstein, before powering down for a couple hours of sleep.

We had transited through Frankfurt before, and it is quite notable for having lots of mandatory stairs even when planes can dock directly to the terminal building.  The last time we transited through Frankfurt, we unloaded on the tarmac via air stairs and had to ride a bus for a very long time to get to the terminal complex.  Today, we docked right at the main terminal building but had to immediately climb a long flight of stairs from the jetway to the terminal main floor.  

Upon arrival into the EU (Germany being a member state) we had to do a biometric registration with a new Entry Exit system, which ties your passport to a photograph and fingerprints.  There are self service kiosks scattered throughout the terminal and there was a brief video played on the plane explaining this new process.  After stopping at the kiosks to have your passport scan, photo and fingerprint registration, you still have to go through immigrations as well, but the process didn’t take more than a couple of minutes.  

Our checked bags were checked through to Oslo, so there was no need to collect our bags.

The business class lounge at Frankfurt was much nicer than the Club at SEA. Janet most appreciated the candy jars containing gummy bears and other candies.  They also had a real espresso bar manned by real baristas so Ben was able to get his espresso fix in.  

While in the lounge, Janet ran into a couple with Viking luggage tags on their luggage and she discovered they were from Anacortes and also boarding the Viking Neptune, but were flying into Bergen.  

Also while we were in the lounge, we noticed a huge emergency vehicle response with a huge parade of ambulances, fire engines and other emergency vehicles racing toward the far end of the terminal building from us.  

We hadn’t realized that there are a couple of Lufthansa Business class lounges in the airport, and that the lounge we stopped at was a long ways from our gate, which wasn’t assigned until an hour or two after our arrival.  

It wasn’t until we walked the length of the terminal building that we found out what the emergency response was all about.  A Boeing 787 at gate A15 had its nose gear collapse, dropping the nose of the plane onto the tarmack.  

There was no fire or explosion, but there certainly were a lot of emergency vehicles blocking the taxiway.  

While this was not our plane, our plane was trapped by the emergency vehicles blocking the taxiway, so our flight was delayed a bit while they found a spare plane parked out on a more remote part of the airport and then loaded us onto buses and drove us out to get on the spare plane.  They also had to refuel the plane and transfer all the luggage and flight crew.  

This A320 neo was a pretty old and run down plane with no real business class seating.  The so-called business class was just economy class seats where the middle seats were left unassigned, but the seat pitch and padding were awful. There were no power outlets or entertainment screens at all.  Fortunately, it was a short flight from Frankfurt to Oslo.  

After collecting our bags, we were directed towards customs, but if you didn’t have anything like animals or produce to declare, you walked right though to the exit, where our Viking representatives were waiting for us.

We were shuttled in a small 8 passenger Sprinter van which barely had enough room for the luggage for the 40 minute drive from the airport to downtown Oslo.
The Radisson Blu Plaza hotel, where Viking was putting us up, is a business class hotel within easy walking distance to the train station where we will be taking the scenic train from Oslo to Bergen on Saturday.  Unfortunately, there is a huge major construction project going up across the street which makes the hotel entry look like a disaster zone, and the noise of the construction with jack hammers and heavy equipment are terrible.  It was also raining pretty hard when we arrived, adding to the noise and confusion. 

The hotel room itself is modern, functional and clean.  The elevators are computerized like the ones on the Sun Princess where you enter which floor you wish to go to on a touch screen, and tap your room card.  The screen then tells you which elevator to take.  

We got up to the room about 6:30pm.  By the time we had gotten our chargers unpacked and set up, jet lag was hitting Janet pretty good so she hit the sack early.  The rain had stopped about 7:30pm and there was still an hour or two of daylight, so Ben walked from the train station to the Grand Hotel, Norwegian Parliament building, and the Oslo City Hall, which were a 20-30 minute walk from the Radisson Blu Plaza hotel.  

Tomorrow morning, breakfast starts at 6:30am, and our Oslo bus tour starts at 8:45am.