Bergen, Norway

Thursday August 17th – Bergen, Norway – Our Second Visit

 

Some History; Back in 2010 we took a 26 day cruise to “The Top of The World” on board the beautiful HAL sip Prinsendam – our records indicate that we visited this beautiful city on the 9th and 10th of August.. Both days were perfect in every aspect with the entire first day consumed by a train and boat trip through the countryside and fjords. The second day we used to explore this iconic beauty of the water front .

 

The Plan: 

 

Since we will only be here for the day, we plan to get a lot of exercise and museum visits.

 

The Reality:

I guess in this lifetime a visitor to this “rainiest” city in Europe only gets one sunny day, in 2010 we had two! So the odds that we would get a rain free day today was certainly not in our favor, and it wasn’t. The skies in the image above were typical of our morning, toward noon dark clouds were moving in, the wind picked up, and the “smell of rain” was in the air.  In our part of the world (home) those are all the indicators we need to “run for cover”.  Almost made it!!

We love this city and today it was being loved to death by all the summer tourists, and everyone seemed to have a smart phone and was disrupting the flow to get their selfies and family photos with the iconic backgrounds – it was a zoo…a happy zoo.

Beautiful manhole covers abound in this city sourounded by cobble stones

Food is very expensive here, as is everything else – USD $ 7.00 for a special hotdog,  $1.60 to use a public toilet in a museum!  Before we went ashore Barbara had packed some sandwiches in the Lido, so we were good there and you never go ashore with a full bladder. One of our dinner table mates had to pay with her credit card to use a bathroom.

 

Our first destination in the morning was Saint Mary’s Church at 3 15 Dreggsailmenningen Street, built in 1170 AD. This church was being repaired in 2010 and scaffolding marred its beauty.  I have included a picture below:

 

We were so blessed to have the short time we did and  Bergen will always be at the top of our favorites.

 

 

Jack W Cummings VOV 2017 – sailing to the Hardangerfjord and the village of Eidfjord