Why It’s Worth Spending A Night In Beautiful Flam, Norway

On our recent trip to Norway, one of the absolute highlights was getting to spend a night in Flam. Most people will visit Flam on a day trip, if that – taking the cruise round from Gudvangen, and taking the famous Flam railway to and/or from the town, with little time in between the journeys.

In fairness, there’s not a lot to do in Flam itself other than take in the spectacular views. Plenty of people will take a shuttle bus up to Stegastein viewpoint, and a few might walk out to one of the nearby waterfalls. In the town itself, there’s a fantastic railway museum, a brewery, and plenty of tourist shops.

In terms of a tourist town, it’s perfect for a short stop – but here’s why I think it’s worth spending a night there too!

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Enjoy the views without the crowds

As daylight turned to darkness, it felt like we had these stunning views to ourselves. We were planning to go out for dinner in the brewery, but it was fully booked until about 9pm (so don’t be thinking this is a deserted town after the day trippers have left!). We opted instead for a takeaway pizza from a food stand at the local campsite – the pizzas are made with local Undredal goat’s cheese, which was delicious!

We got to enjoy this on our balcony at our guest house, a truly wonderful treat.

We woke up in the morning to a cruise ship in the bay, which was a shame as it took away from the view – but it made us even more grateful that we’d managed to get such a peaceful view the night before, as the cruise ship stayed there all day!

Explore the surrounding area

If you’re on foot, the chances are you’ll either spend the whole time in Flam, or take the shuttle up to Stegastein viewpoint in nearby Aurland.

Let me tell you – there is SO much more to this beautiful area than Stegastein.

I highly recommend hiring a car from Flam Car Rental. It’s not cheap, but it made our stay in Flam the highlight of our entire Norway trip. You can also hire electric cars from them, but bear in mind these won’t be able to go as far, so it really depends what you want to do.

Here are some of the best places to drive to within an hour of Flam:

• Gudvangen. If you haven’t already got plans to go to Gudvangen, it’s an easy half-hour drive from Flam. I’m not gonna lie, despite the fact we’d already been, I was tempted to go back just because it’s so gorgeous there! The Viking Village is well worth a visit.

• Undredal. This made our shortlist but we didn’t end up going – we saw it from the boat and it looks absolutely gorgeous! A great place to try some unique Norwegian goats cheese, too.

• Stegastein. Yes, Stegastein is very much worth the drive – because it’s one of the craziest drives I’ve ever done! The steep and narrow switchback road can be a little adrenaline-inducing, especially when you meet a much larger vehicle, but there are plenty of passing places. Despite my fears at times, this is an amazing road to drive, with a couple of spectacular places to stop on the way up before you even get to Stegastein.

• Aurlandsdalen. I’ve written more about this below, but Aurlandsdalen is one of the BEST drives I’ve ever done, without the crazy switchbacks. The views are out-of-this-world phenomenal, and the road is much, much quieter. Plus there is a REALLY fun tunnel!

• Drive through Lærdal tunnel. Speaking of tunnels… I’ve also written more on this below, because it’s a really cool experience! At 25km, this is the longest tunnel in the world.

• Borgund. A little further away but still less than an hour, I highly recommend visiting Borgund stave church, especially if you want a destination at the end of the tunnel. Borgund is another 20 minutes from that side of the tunnel.

• Drive the snow road to Lærdalsøyri. We almost did this road on the way back from Borgund, but we were hankering for some food by this point, so we took the quicker tunnel route back.

Read more about Norway: The Perfect One Week Norway Itinerary For First-Timers

More time for viewpoints!

As above, you can take the shuttle bus up to the Stegastein viewpoint, but if I’m honest… it was really crowded here and it was difficult to get photos without loads of people in. Especially at the end of the ramp, where the reflections from the glass were just full of other people.

The advantage of staying longer means you can beat the day trippers by avoiding peak times.

However!

One of the absolute highlights of our time in Norway was the Mount Prest hike, just a little way further up the road. In the end, because of temperamental weather and also plans to see a few more places, we ended up only doing the first twenty minutes or so of the hike – which in itself gave us far better and unobstructed views than those at Stegastein.

I HIGHLY recommend this if you have the chance! There are also shuttle buses here, though less frequent than the Stegastein ones.

There’s a really useful guide to the Mount Prest hike here, which is where I found out about the plateau a short way into the hike. It’s a good resource if you’re planning the whole hike.

Visit Aurlandsdalen

From the Stegastein road, we headed back down and instead of carrying on back to Flam, we turned off through Aurlandsdalen.

This was without a doubt one of the most beautiful places we saw in Norway. To the point that the Flam railway scenery fell a little flat afterwards. GENUINELY.

To get to the spectacular viewpoint, you have to drive through a mountain… from ground level to the top.

I’m sure I don’t need to explain that this means a steep, winding tunnel through the freaking mountain. It was like driving in a video game! I wish we’d filmed it, because it was SO much fun! One of the best drives I’ve ever done – and to think we almost completely missed this!

I mean, I did wonder why the map on Google looked like this.

There are plenty of hikes to do in Aurlandsdalen too, and if we had more time, it’s something we might have done!

Speaking of tunnels…

Drive through the longest tunnel in the world

We strategically booked our car for the late afternoon on our first day in Flam, which meant we would have it overnight to return just before our journey on the Flam railway.

I decided that our “test drive” should be to the Borgund stave church – somewhere we would never have had the chance to visit if we weren’t spending a night in Flam!

This meant that we had to drive through the Lærdal tunnel from Aurlandsvagen – a whopping 25km tunnel through the earth! It’s a really cool experience, although I won’t lie, I was craving some open air by the time we reached the end of it.

As an aside, the Borgund stave church is 100% WORTH seeing, if you have the chance! This is one of the coolest things we saw on our trip! It’s around a 50 minute drive from Flam.

Get out on the water

I would argue that the best way to make the most of your time in Flam is to get out on the water.

We did the fjord cruise from Gudvangen round to Flam, through the stunning Naeroyfjord into Aurlandsfjord. You will see very quickly that Aurlandsfjord is stunning, but I would say Naeroyfjord is even better! Unfortunately, the weather decided not to play ball for that part of our trip…

However, if you are staying in Flam for a night, you could definitely get out on the water in another way:

• Rent a kayak. A few places offer kayak rentals, including the place we stayed.

• Do a kayaking tour. Not confident getting out by yourself? Take a guided tour on the fjord. These tours can be quite pricey, but I think it would be worth it for the experience!

• Take a RIB safari tour. For something a little more fast-paced, you can head out on the fjord on a RIB boat. This would be an exciting way to explore and really get back to nature.

• Take a swim! If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, take a dip in the cooling waters of the fjord. This could be paired with a relaxing sauna visit on the waterfront of Flam, where you can jump off into the fjord afterwards!

We chose to soak up as much of the surrounding scenery as we could, rather than soaking up the fjord itself, so we didn’t end up doing any of these – but my friend Martha over at May Cause Wanderlust did a few of these activities if you want to find out more from a personal experience!

Do some hikes

There are plenty of hikes in the area for all abilities. If you want something short and sweet, then the hike to the nearby Brekkefossen waterfall is a good one to start.

Mount Prest is a popular hike in the area, and takes around 3 hours total. We ended up just doing part of the hike because there was a lot we wanted to see – cementing the fact that spending even more than one night in Flam could be a great idea too! But even after less than twenty minutes, we found a beautiful viewpoint.

For something a bit more challenging, the Rimstigen hike takes you high above Naeroysfjord, and the photos I’ve seen of it look absolutely phenomenal. But everything I’ve read about it say that it’s challenging, particularly after wet weather, so take care on this one.

And if you don’t need sweeping views of fjords, the hikes in Aurlandsdalen look fantastic and varied.

Needless to say, you could spend a few nights in or around Flam and you still wouldn’t be able to do everything!

Where we stayed in Flam

I want to give our guesthouse a shout out, because it was FANTASTIC.

Our room overlooked the fjord, and there’s a wonderful shared balcony to enjoy some drinks or food with the view.

It was an odd combination of guesthouse and hostel, with shared facilities and a kitchen with free tea and coffee but all nice, private rooms. It was also by far the most expensive place we stayed in Norway (just over £200 for the fjord view room), but all accommodation in Flam runs high, so what we paid was actually pretty average. However it’s worth taking this into consideration when working out your budget for Norway, because we couldn’t realistically have afforded more than one night there, especially when everywhere else was under £100 a night.

You can book the guesthouse on booking.com!

You could also look at nearby Gudvangen, but to be honest everywhere there was either just as expensive unless we wanted to camp, but it was high season (and relatively last minute), so you might find a better deal outside the prime summer months.

There are a few places where I really think it’s worth paying the premium to stay, and Flam is definitely one of them. From beautiful road trips to spectacular hikes, the area has an awful lot to offer that so many people miss in their quest to tick off a couple of key experiences on the way.

And of course that’s fine, and not everyone has the means or the time to spend everywhere, but Flam (or Gudvangen) is one that should be prioritised if possible! It was probably the highlight of our entire week in Norway – and it had a lot of competition!

Read more about our amazing time in Norway below:
⭐ The Perfect One Week Norway Itinerary For First-Timers
⭐ 12 Ways To Save Money & Keep Costs Down On A Trip To Norway

Or some other beautiful Europe adventures:
⭐ Slovenia: Loving Ljubljana & Visiting Lake Bled In March
⭐ A Day Trip Guide: San Marino From Bologna
⭐ A Photo Tour Of Colmar, France’s Fairytale Town
⭐ A Day Trip To Rila Monastery, Bulgaria