Bergen

Bergen is Norway's third largest city, and judging by the traffic the day we stopped there, it is the biggest cruise ship destination in the country. No fewer than 6 ships were in port at the same time. This led to Times Square-like crowds as they arrived and passengers swarmed into the small inner harbor and downtown area.

I was lucky enough to get off the ship early in the morning and have the main downtown area mostly to myself. One of the big attractions of this area is the fish market. It's held out of doors in stalls under tents. The multi-lingual sellers tout their fresh salmon, roe, smoked whale meat (!) and other delicacies in most of the EU languages and in English. Nearby stalls sell reindeer and elk sausages, seal skins and wolf pelts, and more sedate souvenirs such as knitted sweaters and caps, along with the ubiquitous refrigerator magnets, stickers and shot glasses.

The town is dominated from above by Mt. Flojen. The old town crawls up its flanks surrounded by a park. I wandered up through the old town early in the morning and was enchanted by the small houses, the breathtaking views over the downtown and harbor, and the lovely touches in the way people had decorated their doors and windows.











The hills are so steep that there is a funicular travelling up and down constantly. Most people sensibly use it to get to the top of the hill, then walk down through the park and the old town. I missed finding the station and kept wandering further and further up the slope. By the time I found the tracks and a station, I was too stubborn to pay the tariff for just a partial trip and resolved to walk all the way up. It didn't seem like a long hike. It turned out to be a very cheap trip to the gym.

Once at the top, I enjoyed watching a group of young children on a field trip play on the climbing equipment in the park. I was less amused by the realization that while I'd been climbing, hundreds of tourists from our ship and others had ascended the funicular. The summit was a frenzy of multilingual, camera toting, tour-label wearing folks jostling for a shot at the panoramic view below. That is when they weren't lined up for the pay toilets, the souvenirs or a snack.

I got on line and rode the funicular down. The quiet little downtown corner where I'd started was now full of people. The line to go up the funicular ran out of the terminal and more than a city block down the street. Tour guides struggled like sheep dogs to keep their flocks in line and the funicular ran nonstop ferrying the next load up the mountain.

Down at the fish market the scene was even more of a contrast. Where the early morning had offered a calm dockside scene, midday produced a jampacked mass of people jostling past and among the stalls yammering in many languages. There's a kiosk offering fish and chips, calamari and chips and mixed seafood and chips. It looked so good I had to try it. After a 30 minute line, I grabbed my plate and found a seat with two folks from the UK who had travelled to Bergen via Sweden and the fjords by car. These are the folks who (it seemed to me) enjoyed pointing out to me that the dollar is sinking faster than a stone while the pound is doing just fine, thank you very much. Their smugness was tempered by their distress at having paid way more than they wanted to regardless for a plate of fish that the husband wouldn't eat after one taste. He ended the meal with an Alka Seltzer chaser before leaving. I followed my very mediocre calamari with a large plastic cup of fresh strawberries, which are very much in season here now. They were possibly the best, sweetest strawberries I've ever had.

Then it was hustling back to the ship for our mid-day departure.