Beautiful Bergen

Wednesday, 21 January 2015

I've been to Bergen three or four times before, all in summer, and all in the early 90s.  It reminds me of Hobart - a shipping & fishing town build on and around the hills surrounding the harbour.  And just like Hobart there is lots of history around the docks, and that's where the real touristy heart of the place is too.  Although of course at this time of year there seems to be just us and about 6 other tourists in town. It's a mixed blessing, as while we seem to have every place to ourselves, there are quite a few places being renovated or closed for winter, and the hours of the places that are open are quite short. In fact just walking around the town it's clear that all the maintenance work is done in winter so everything can be pretty as a picture in summer.

We have been lucky with the weather so far in Norway - Drammen turned on the snow for our arrival, and Bergen has turned on the sun and blue sky for the first time in 50 days according to the locals. That's not to say it was warm - we had to wear beanies and gloves outside, and if we lingered too long anywhere, we got a bit cold - so it was good to keep moving.  This is Zali trying to warm up Jett's hands..

Today we visited the old buildings near the water, the old castle, the museum of contemporary art, and we spent a long time at the Norwegian equivalent of Questacon - the interactive science museum.  In fact so long that they had to boot us out of there.    Here are some random pictures..

Once home, the kids relaxed, Jon got onto work stuff, and I, in an attempt to stave off future cabin fever,  headed back out and ran up to the top of the Fløibanen - the railway thing we did yesterday.   

Tomorrow we've told they kids they can spend some time in the shops, working out how to spend their Christmas kronor that they got from their SA grandparents, and then we'll be boarding the boat..