Advice for day in Olden

[sbt518]

Hello, we just booked a cruise this August going to the Norwegian fjords and one of our stops is in Olden.

We are there from 8am-5pm and I am trying to decide if we should do the Loen Sky Lift or a bus trip to Briksdal glacier.

I don't think we have time to do both.

The Skylift website says it opens at 9am so we could be there right at opening.  How much time does one need there? I guess it would depend on how much hiking we wanted to do at the top?

 

And then the trip to the glacier leaves at 12pm so we'd have less than 3 hours to do the whole sky lift experience and get the shuttle bus back to the port area to be picked up to go to the glacier.

 

I've read a few posts here that say the best thing to do in Olden is the sky lift, can someone provide more info as to why? Or maybe there's a third option in Olden I haven't found yet? We do have an aft balcony so we plan on viewing the sail in and out of Olden from there.

 

Oh and if it would affect your decision, below are our other port stops and our tentative plans

 

Bergen - probably wander around town a bit and then do the roundtrip fjord cruise to Mostraumen

Stavenger - another fjord cruise on the Lysefjord to view the pulpit rock from the bottom

Kristiansand - maybe a cruise ship excursion called Mircobrewery and Fish Market or we'd try to just do that on our own because ship tours are so overpriced and we already know enough to know we like beer and can eat fish!

 

Thanks!

[kitkat343]

We did the fjord cruise in Stavanger, and it was nice.  

 

In Olden, I'd recommend contacting Olden Adventures to ask them if you have enough time for both excursions.  They run buses to both, so they would know the logistics best.  We had enough time for both and I think we got off the ship by 830 am and returned by 5 but it was 6 years ago so I'm not certain.

 

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.  But this is a highly weather dependent excursion, and on a foggy day I'm not sure if it would justify the price.

 

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 pre-covid is a public bus that runs from June –August. You'd need to research if that's still running or its logistics if that's something you are interested in.

 

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 or I think someone mentioned that you might now be able to book the troll car through Olden adventures if you require one.

 

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. 

Edited May 7, 2023 by kitkat343