Our last port of call was Bergen, which is also located on the west coast of Norway. This is the second largest city in the country. The forecast for this day called for intermittent rain. For the most part during our entire trip, we had mostly decent days of minimal rain. Luckily our dock was a short walk to the city center (I counted at least 3 or 4 other cruise ships in port the same time that we were there).
The first place we stopped at was the fish market – one of the more well-known tourist spots of the city. It was still earlier in the morning so many of the vendors were still setting up shop and it was a bit too early to be trying too many samples. My parents did overhear one vendor speaking in Taiwanese so struck up a conversation – they later purchased some fish paste from her.
Along the harbor front were rows of colorful looking row houses, which I guess is one of the most recognizable landmarks of the town.
So after a quick perusal we kept on walking making our way toward the Kode museum. Since it was still relatively early, the museum wasn’t open yet but we hung out in a large open park with a big pond. There were some extremely friendly ducks who I think were looking for us to give them some food.
The Kode museum is broken up into 4 different building with various types of art. We started at Kode 3, which houses the Rasmus Meyer collection. Within this collection is a lot of Edvard Munch’s work. Munch is known for the painting “The Scream.” I don’t claim to be an art aficionado or even that well versed in art history but I can appreciate the beauty and complexities of creating the art.
After a few hours checking out art, explored the town some on foot and made our way to a well-known hot dog stand, Trekroneren. I like to be adventurous with my food and had the Reindeer hot dog. It was honestly very good and tasty.
My parents again decided to walk around on their own since they had previously been to Bergen. D and I went to check out another famous mountain/hill. Similar to Ålesund, there’s an overlook area that you can visit that looks down on the city. Fløyen is a “city mountain” and you can take a funicular, or train ride to the top. From Floyen, there are hikes and walks that you can take to explore the area. We learned that Norwegians are huge on outdoor activity and will spend as much time doing various activities (hiking, camping, biking) even with the high percentage of rainy days.
View from the top:
It was fun to watch as the rain rolled in from the sea. By the time we reached the bottom, it was raining pretty hard. Luckily our next stop was near the entrance to the funicular. The ship’s cultural director had mentioned trying a Skillingsboller (kind of like a cinnamon roll). We enjoyed it while we waited for the rain to diminish so we could continue our stroll through town and back toward the ship.
On our walk back to the cruise ship we passed Bryggen, which is a medieval wharf with colorful, wooden-clad boat houses. We didn’t actually go walking through the area though since we were tired and ready to just get back to the ship.
-StewsCat
StewsCat 