Long day of travel....
13 hours in the air and 8 hours of sitting in airports, but no plane delays, no lost luggage (amazing!) and we made it to Bergen around noon on the 14th. I have to give it up to my dad, he smuggled tiny vodka bottles onto the long flight over the Atlantic, made it feasible to get a few hours of sleep in and we were not paying $6 a pop...so got a few hours, but that was it....tired but stoked...
Flying into Bergen...
was really cool, very similar to flying into Seattle, with islands dotting the sea and pine trees growing down the sea level. It did seem a bit more rugged, but gorgeous in the same way.
Took the bus into downtown Bergen with no issues, gotta love public transportation.. this city is not much bigger than Boise, but has bus routes going everywhere and lite rail as well...and since the cost of a cab ride is about $100, a way to save some cash.
Our hotel room...
is just off the Bryggen water front, the picture on my first post, we only had to walk a few hundred feet. We were able to check in early, which was great since we were seriously draggin ass and needed to stay awake at least until 8pm so we were not waking up at 4am...
The room was more or less what I expected, VERY small, but actually pretty nice. It is probably 10 feet wide and 15 feet long, two single beds (which is great, I love my dad and all but not that much) with the typical euro bed topper and a nice comforter... really I am not sure if any of that mattered, pretty sure I could have slept on dirt and all would have been well.
I took a quick shower and we took off to stay awake and walk around the town.
Bergen,
at least the waterfront area is a big tourist area, there were 2 giant cruise ships docked down the port and you could tell it by the mass of humanity running around the streets. This area of town is totally geared towards that, but we still had fun checking out the fish market (smoked whale available if anyone wants me to bring some back) the numerous sweater shops, trinkets etc... viking swords too...
We walked for what seemed like hours, looked down at the watch it was only 2pm.... staying awake was going to be a chore. We went up a visited one of the large churches, St. John's, very interesting on the inside which was almost completely made of wood. To tell you the truth, much of the day is a blur, but it was gloriously sunny... something we may not see again for a few days and we had fun playing the tourist part.
5pm finally rolled around and we went to Cafe Opera, pretty good food and I think fairly typical Norwegian cuisine.. I had the cod and my dad had the salmon, both of which (especially the cod) were much better than what I have had in the for a similar cafe in the states. We both had a glass of beer, mine was .6L of pilsner goodness that came it at $12.03... but it was probably worth it as it gave me a bit of a boost to make it to our 8pm sleep goal.
Took off from Cafe Opera and started heading back to the room. Made a quick stop in at the 7 Eleven...(yep 7 Elevens are EVERYWHERE here, I think I counted 7 just around the area we were walking, I am not sure if I have seen that many in the US in the last several years) we bought a few mixers for our duty free alcohol that we purchased just prior to arriving at Bergen.
Made it back to the hotel, poured a shot of Patron and mixed a gin and tonic... downed quick like and went downstairs to smoke our fine Cuban cigars that we had also scored at the duty free.
The cubans we FINE, but really probably wasted on me as I have a hard time determing the difference between any cigars, but this one was a bit tastier and certainly smoked well... nice time to share with my pops as we stared out towards the bay while some dudes were re-enacting viking warfare (real swords and all) in the park south of us.
I was FINISHEd... went up to the room, started reading my book (girl with the dragon tatoo... pretty good BTW) next thing I knew I woke up at 4 am needing some tylenol and water...I had been PATRONED...
Arose for good at 8 am, tylenol did its job, Dad was still zonked, so I went downstairs for what I was hoping was a GREAT breakfast, similar to the ones we had in Italy (see BMW335 blog)... I was not disappointed, it had all the typical fixings... meats, cheeses, half boiled eggs, breads etc.... why can't US hotels have this...?
Went back upstairs, my dad was still passed out... I had to wake him up, this is ironic for several reasons which I am laughing about as we speak.
Today....
is pretty rainy, think Seattle in the spring, it was supposed to rain 1/4 " by noon and I am pretty sure it did... looking fairly nice, but overcast now.. again think seattle after heavy rain... so hopefully that will be the norm rather than the downpour of earlier for the rest of today.
We are taking off on the "fast boat" to Rysjedalsvika at 4:30, where Terje (3rd/4th/5th cousin not sure exactly) is picking us up to take us back to Saetvik (the family farm/summer home area) where they are having the reunion... VERY exciting to finally meet our relatives that we have been talking to thru facebook/email for the last year.... should be a superrific.
Taking off to the Funicular to burn a few hours until we leave on the fast boat to Sogn fjord up north...
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