Saturday, June 1, 2013, in Bergen, Norway

We've arrived in Bergen, the last port of call on our Norwegian fjords cruise.  Our lovely sunny weather has deserted us.  I hear that it almost always rains or is foggy in Bergen.  Very foggy today.  We bag the idea of the Floibanen (funicular), because we wouldn't see anything in the fog.

This is a picture of Iselin, Trond, me, and Marta at the Bryggen, the old Hanseatic League warehouses.  Trond is Marta's son-in-law and Iselin is her grand daughter.  They've come to collect us to spend the day. The Bryggen is only a short walk from where the ship is docked.

Here is an alley in the Bryggen.  Note the skyway.

The original buildings were destroyed by a fire in 1702.  These are replacements and are UNESCO listed.

A lot of these Norwegian towns had catastrophic fires at one time or another.

After wandering around in the Bryggen, we moved on to the market and the fish market.  Lots of gorgeous flowers and fruits for sale.  And fish!

Trond then collected the car and we were off to Gamle Bergen.  In the 19th century, Bergen was Europe's biggest city of wooden buildings.  Gamle (Old) Bergen is a reconstructed town of around 50 buildings.  Some of the houses are on their original sites, but the majority have been collected from other parts of Bergen.  As you wander around the museum, you meet people who bring the history to life.  We had the museum all to ourselves!  No other pesky tourists.  It was wonderful.

This was a servant.  She told us all sorts of fascinating information about what it was like to be a servant, how people dressed, what she was doing, etc.



















We then toured downtown Bergen some more and headed off across the big bridge (Askoybrua) we had earlier sailed under to the island (Strusshamn) where Trond and Hildur live to have lunch.

Heidi and Carolyn are ready for lunch and some of Hildur's delicious waffles.  Note the view of the harbor from their living room!  You can barely see the bridge through the fog.  Marta said she saw us sail in that morning.

This is Anja, the second daughter.

 Iselin

Hildur Alice, Marta's daughter

The boys, Ingve, Vemund, and Askild, playing with Legos

Marta

After our lovely lunch, it was time to head back to the ship.  The boys wanted to come along so they could see the ship, so we switched to a larger car.  Trond drove us around a bit more on the way back to the ship and one of the things we saw was the house where the king stays when he is in town.

Here we are back at the ship and ready for our sail out through all the islands.  I stood on our balcony and waved in case they could see us through the fog.  It was a wonderful day!  I told Marta she must come back to the US and we'll go to Phoenix this time since all the Jessens seem to be moving there.

The lost days of Norway

You've no doubt noticed a lack of posting from Norway.  The satellite internet did not work in the fjords, so I pretty much gave up on trying to blog.  Now that I'm back home, have my pictures uploaded, and have a broadband connection to the internet, I hope to add the rest of the information.  It won't necessarily be in order; in fact, I started with Bergen first because I want to get the pictures to all the relatives.

So stay tuned.  Here was the Norway itinerary:

May 24:  sail from Harwich, England
May 25:  at sea
May 26:  Oslo, Norway
May 27:  Kristiansand, Norway
May 28:  Stavanger, Norway
May 29:  Alesund, Norway
May 30:  Geiranger, Norway
May 31:  Flom, Norway
June 1:   Bergen, Norway
June 2:   at sea
June 3:   arrive back in Harwich, England

I will see if I can go back and amend the earlier blog entries and add photos.  Not quite sure how all this works, am still playing with it.  If I can't amend the posts, maybe I'll try links to albums or new posts with just photos.