Ausflug 38

June 19th: Bergen, Norway

After a day at sea, we had recovered a bit from our jet lag, so we arose early to watch as the Caribbean Princess sailed into a fjord towards the city of Bergen.

The fjord had a surprising variety of scenery. We passed small islands, troll-sized lighthouses,and even went under a long, graceful suspension bridge.

Our plan was to take the free shuttle into the town center, find an ATM to get some cash, walk to the funicular and take it up the side of the mountain to the top, and then walk the trails that I knew were arrayed around the crest of the mountains. Mountains lie in a big "U" shape around the town of Bergen, with the town itself in the broad, open part of the U at the seaside. As it turned out, the network of trails on the mountaintop ridges does go all around the outskirts of Bergen, but we only walked a part of it.

The ATM we found under a sign proclaiming "Minibank" and we withdrew 1,000 Kroner (about $180) as we were going to be stopping at various places in Norway for the next week or more. After a bit of fumbling around with the rather vague map of Bergen provided by our ship, we finally found the funicular and took it up the side of the mountain. The funicular was a bit more expensive than I had expected, 40 Kroner or about $7 one way and 80 Kroner round trip. We wanted to have all our energy to walk around on top, so we ponied up the money for a round-trip, and were smoothly and silently whisked to the top. (For those of our readers who want to save money, it is easy to walk down the mountain from the top, so you could get by with just the one-way ticket going up. But be sure to ask for the map when you purchase your ticket!)

Once on top we took our pictures out over the port area and with the troll statue there. Seeing a small lake depicted on a map, we walked in that general direction and found a very tiny lake, not much larger than a big farm pond, sitting at the head of an equally tiny dam. Despite the lake's diminutive size, school kids were out canoeing on it and other groups of school kids were having picnic lunches and so forth. Much kid-generated hurly-burly.

We circled the lake, enjoying the antics of the kids, and then headed up toward the top of a small knoll. Then we stayed to the ridgetop trail as we worked our way out along the headland on the East side of Bergen (I think). The trail was blazed with red arrows on small wooden plaques, but they were only placed where you absolutely had to make a decision about which way to go.

Finally, after a short scramble up the side of a really big boulder, we reached our first mountaintop overlook and had an absolutely grand view of Bergen in the valley below, our cruise ship in the harbor, and a Costa cruise ship out at the end of the point where an old fort is located.

From there the trail wound its way inland across some small bogs and along some stony trails to a second, even higher viewpoint. But the spooky thing is that we were now utterly alone in this quiet, sweet-smelling fir forest. Didn't see a soul for at least a half an hour despite the hordes of people that had taken the funicular up the mountain, so that was spooky, but in a fun way.

After about 3 hours of slowly rambling around the trails, we were tired and headed back to the funicular even though many more miles of trails beckoned our wandering feet. Instead, we were whisked back down to the Old Town section of Bergen's city center, and wandered amongst the vendors in their tents and pavilions. Many of the offerings were food, but that was mostly varieties of fish which did not attract Monika in the slightest (I might have been interested.).

But arts and crafts and postcards and trinkets were also available, and Monika found a pair of earrings I purchased for her as well as a knit wool headband with earflaps that she purchased for me. The earflaps were 79 Kroner, but that was about 1/2 what we saw the identical item on sale for in other shops on the trip. Post cards at 3 Kroner each were also much less expensive than in the regular shops, where they ranged from 5 to 9 Kroner.

After several hours of walking above and about Bergen, we called it quits and took the shuttle back to the Caribbean Princess. Returning to our cabin after a cheerful dinner with George, Kathy, Barry, and Lee, we were pleasantly surprised that we had gotten tickets for the train and walking tour we had tried to sign up for in Flaan on June 20th.