At the conclusion of our full day’s excursion that had seen us visit the Borgund Stave Church, the village of Lærdalsøyri, and the Stegastein Lookout and village of Aurlandsvangen, we were dropped off back where our cruise ship, Crown Princess, was waiting for us alongside in the village of Flåm (often anglicised as its original form Flaam). While some people on our bus did make their way immediately for the ship, doubtless to get some food from the buffet because God knows that cruisers do like their included food from the buffet, we decided we’d at least give the village a quick look-over because we’re nosy like that.
Even with cloud cover – some of it very low and forming interesting-looking streamers within the mountainous walls of the surrounding fjord during our 2013 visit – Flåm is very attractive, but being a village with only a few hundred inhabitants it does suffer from not having a whole lot to do and on our arrival it all seemed very quiet indeed even allowing for the serenity emanating off the scenery. I will make some allowance for the fact it had been raining for most of the day on this occasion, too.
Certainly, businesses have sprung up to cater for the influx of tourists, increasingly from cruise ships, but generally these are simply shops and cafés plus a couple of small museums. There is a local railway line running from the village that provides for some spectacular views (we’ve not done it but it’s supposed to be excellent) but if you’re thinking of visiting this village port on a cruise ship then it’s probably best you plan to take a trip inland when you’re there if you want to see something more of interest than wooden buildings and souvenir shops selling sweaters. This lack of captivating attractions can completely skew the financial benefits that a cruise ship can bring to a port especially when the ship is as easily accessible as it is in Flåm; given a choice between spending some money to buy food ashore – and in Norway that can be a lot of money as you’ll see further down – or eating as much as you want for no additional cost aboard, a significant proportion of travellers will choose not to support the local economy and to channel their inner-tightness to save a few quid on their multi-hundreds of pounds holidays. Well, we’ve paid for it already, haven’t we? they’ll say, and we’ll smile tightly and nod and think dark thoughts. Yes, I know that anecdotally some people have real reasons to act that way. We’ve just never met any and this is a site about cold, hard facts, damn it!
Now, that being said about there not being a lot to do in Flåm, there is one thing that leapt to the forefront of our attention when our guide mentioned it on the bus back to the port: Flåm has a brewery. Thus is was that we had exactly one thing on our mind as we jumped down from the vehicle by the water. Let’s buy a sweater! No, wait, that wasn’t it. To the brewery! That sounds more like us. Long story short, we went and we had a fabulous time there.
Here then is our recommendation for the top thing to do in Flåm: make sure you’ve got plenty of money and spend a couple of hours in the gorgeous Ægir BrewPub. You can get some food there too if you want but the beers are the stars of the location. We love frequenting microbreweries back home because there’s nothing nicer than beer freshly-made and we always seek them out when we travel too. For as good as the cocktails are on a cruise ship, it’s fair to say that beer quality is an area where all the lines do disappointingly for our tastes (P&O usually keep a decent range of bottled beers in theory, but good luck with them being stocked) so a chance to get something malty and amber-coloured or darker and with a connection to the port of call on the cruise is something we jump at. In this respect Ægir excelled. Three drinks each set us back fifty-four pounds in 2013 so factor that into your budget plans if you must but also consider that we were well-aware of the price and ended up spending that amount anyway.
In addition to the brewery having a lovely, wooden interior it also sported some fabulous chairs with rotating, cupped seats. Interesting enough when we first arrived they provided even more spinning-based enjoyment as each drink slipped down and it was all I could do to convince my wife that buying and/or stealing one of them and trying to get it back on the ship was not the most sensible of things to be considering.
We did take a look at the shops in Flåm but didn’t see anything to make our souvenir-spending juices run and concluded our time in the pretty village with a slow wander back to the ship.
With our cabin being located on the starboard side of the ship we had a view of the landscape opposite the village from our balcony. This was effectively just the innermost part of the Aurlandsfjord and the few buildings along its shoreline; mostly the village marina and rental cottages. It was nice to see the wispy string of low cloud level with it in the fjord valley.
The next day would see us visit the final port on this Norwegian fjords cruise, that being Stavanger.