Fri, 25 Jul 2003

author Tim	location Bergen, Norge
posted 22:56 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Norge ( all photos )

Bergen ( 24 photos )
We have just spent a great day exploring Bergen - a quaint little city which it is hard to be believe is the largest for a big distance.
We spent a slow morning doing the washing up, some washing and lazing around a bit, before paying for another night staying at the same caravan park, and getting a Bergen Card each. This covered all our sightseeing expenses, bus trips into the city and quite a few other things. We were a little peeved to find out that many of the museums are only open short hours, so unless you plan your day very well, you aren't going to get the best value out of your card. Nonetheless, we had enjoyed ourselves.
The bus dropped us off at the central bus station, from where we stumbled our way around a bit before finding the stretched octagonal lake Lille Lungegårdsvann which forms the focal piece of the city. We located the old city gate, then wandered past the first and possibly strangest museum that our card covered, the Leprosy Museum. With a nurse in tow, we had to wander in to take in Norway's contribution to the eradication of the disease. Interesting, but in hindsight we spent too much time there as the other museums were all closing!
From there we wandered up to a great internet café, where I plugged the laptop in and performed a long-overdue journal upload, email check, and learning of exchange rates (important!), while Liz got oriented around the city. Sorry it has been so long, but Internet connectivity up here is patchy at best.
We wandered down to the Fishmarket which Liz had located, looking at the large number of stalls all competing for business. We settled on a couple of bread rolls with various seafoods on them, a nice hearty lunch which filled us up for quite a while, sitting by the docks with their famous view across to the old part of town.
We were very close there to the Fløibanen Funicular Railway. For those not familiar with the term funicular (I wasn't), it seems to mean "climbing really steeply up the side of a mountain". Similar to the Scenic Railway at Katoomba if you know that. Flashing our Bergen Card, we jumped in a queue before being rapidly transported to the top of the mountain. The view from there was totally amazing, as the clouds which blighted the latter part of the day hadn't quite made it in, so we could see for miles around.
We wandered around a little, again resisting the tourist shops there before grabbing the train back down, savouring the views along the way.
We did quite a bit more wandering around the streets of town with nothing particular in mind for a few hours, stopping for a while for a coffee on one of the pedestrianised streets. We also saw the Bryggen area (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) where the old historic buildings had been converted in to, you guessed it, touristy shops selling all manner of things that would probably get confiscated by Kingsford Smith customs - knives, antlers, deer hooves, and lots of different animal skins.
We asked at the main tourist office if there was any live jazz going on in town, but they couldn't locate any, before settling in for a good relaxation session just outside in the expansive area filled with people chatting, eating and drinking. Not to be the odd ones out, we ordered a pizza and couple of rather expensive beers, sipped them very slowly and enjoyed the view.
We typed replies to a few emails before dropping back into the internet café to send them - don't know when we will find a connection again. Dad was online at home so we had a chat to him for a while which was good - always nice to "hear" friendly voices when we are over here.
By now it was time for home, so we navigated back to the labyrinth of a central bus station and stumbled across the correct bus back to the caravan park.
Since then we have done little other than chase a hedgehog around trying to get it to stand still for a photo with little luck. It's our first piece of non-bird wildlife over here, we have expected to see more actually.

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