There are discreet cities that we have heard very little about. It must be said that in Scandinavia, the cities most exposed to the media are necessarily the four capitals (Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo). More episodically, one can hear about Odense in Denmark, the city of the famous Danish novelist. In Norway, there is also Bergen, the capital of the fjords, a town that attracts a large part of the tourists.
Do you know Alesund, one of the most beautiful cities in Scandinavia?
When you arrive in Alesund by car, the tour usually starts at the top of the town. After a long climb up to the Aksla mountain behind the little train that runs at about 10 kilometres an hour, you are taken in by the view. For it is from Fjellstua, the highest point in the city, that you can capture the beauty of Alesund. A town set on a few islands in the middle of a fjord. A city that can be visited in a day. But a city that deserves a detour, even if it’s only for a two-hour break. Scandinavia is a vast area, Norway is a big country all the way. But Alesund is an almost obligatory point of the passage because the city is so warm and you feel good about it.
Mount Aksla, to see the city from above.
On Mount Aksla, there are superb views of the surroundings of the beautiful town of Alesund. And if you look a little closer, it almost seems as if the city has been taken straight out of a children’s fairy tale.
From this peninsula, you can admire Valderhaugfjorden and Heissafjorden. Two vast fjords that surround the town centre. But what is so special about Mount Aksla is the fact that you are close enough to the city to be able to admire every detail. It’s merely incredible because you feel like a diamond dealer admiring the dozens of facets of a jewel. Because, yes Alesund is a diamond, innocently placed on three small islands in the west of the Norwegian coast.
Visit Alesund city centre
Because time is often short, but also because the distances in Norway always take a long time. It is fundamental to optimize the time we spend on every point of interest in the country. There are so many things to see and discover in Norway, that even if you are a slow traveller, you will have to make choices to see the maximum. That is to say between two or three places on the same day. I would have loved to spend more time in Alesund, however, to spend more time, it would have taken more preparation and at least three days to start living at the rhythm of the city. Besides, Norway is an expensive country, so it’s always complicated to stop in a hotel and pay more than a hundred euros a night, which represents a budget of five or six nights in a (Norwegian) campsite.
In other words, Alesund is not New York. To discover the city, you have to be interested in each monument, in the history of the town. But also to its terrible fire of 1904. A fire that sent more than eight hundred houses ablaze. And this is perhaps one of the reasons why Alesund today is a city where wooden cladding has almost wholly disappeared. Behind its model town appearance lies a terrible and tragic fire.
Alesund in brief
To get to the point, Alesund is a friendly town that looks like a children’s fairy-tale town or a town of dolls. The small white houses dotted with a few colourful houses give this town in western Norway a Scandinavian feel. Small cafes, restaurants and flowers all over the city provide a lot of character and charm to this beautiful Scandinavian city.
Alesund has a quay that can accommodate the largest cruise ships in the world. When a thousand people are let loose in a small town, it can quickly degenerate into a kind of open airpark. But don’t worry, the time of the cruise passengers is limited, just like that of the tourist coaches. Alesund is still spared from mass tourism. First of all, because this city is far from the centre of Europe, it is now from the airports, and it is not as famous as Bergen or Geiranger, which are two of the most beautiful cities in Norway.
photo credits: Yann Vernerie