Ambassadeur Anker Hotel Bergen

... point for Hurtigruten, the ferries providing transort, freight goods and passengers to the isolated communities lying amidst the fjords.<br><br>I been in Bergen for two days. It is an easy town to get about since its major attractions are concentrated in the downtown harbour area. Accommodation is varied, reasonably priced (if you book a hotel prior to showing up through Expedia or Lonely Planet websites; 3 nights ...

... station and were off on a wonderful journey of 7 hours thru one of the top 20 train rides in the world. We climbed 1000 m or more in a few hours and were travelling thru the snowcapped mountains. There were a few stops on the way (enough for me to grab a puff.)....and marvel at the local tourism of the area. Every train station had hundreds of bikes for hire and of course walking trails galore.....walking being the national pasttime! It seems so healthy here ...

... I could already smell the mountains in that queue- and it was intoxicating! <br> Disembarking the bus, a short walk was still required to reach the official Start Point. I couldn't help commenting to Frank that it was like going to a 'Rave' back in the late 80's early 90's as we and our fellow walkers strode with purpose toward our goal. Arriving there our first priority was to register: The '7 Fjellsturen' (7 Mountain Hike), is a famous ...

... outside their home still open. For dinner we had a little bit of junk food in the frozen fish cordon Belau and Fish fingers as well as smoked salmon, warm smoked pepper salmon, smoked mackerel, prawns, crab meat, egg, bread with cream cheese as well as some capsicum and Sam's home grown tomatoes 'the only tomato grown in Norway'. Had some more quality chit chat and Aina tried to work out transport to Finland for us but thought the system was **** too.

... so all the more hours of perfect weather! (Although, my last day there it got much cooler, so I guess the other two days were outliers.). Anyway, my first impressions of Norway was that it is all sparkling water and fresh air! Bergen itself is very cute. Very much how I would imagine a Scandinavian fishing town should look. (Whatever that means?! Do you really have a schema for "Scandinavian ...

... three wakeup phone calls, I finally got up to make the rounds and take pictures of our entrance to Norway. Of course, immediately after we couldn't take it anymore from 6-7am and after a full breakfast, we snoozed until ten and were quite possibly the last few individuals off of the ship. A small group of us headed through Bergen, visited Bryggen, an old fishing community that looks like a wooden shanty town from a Wild West flick and then made our way through to ...

... of it which is very lucky for the restaurant that is there because with 40 minutes to kill and nothing else to do but look up at the glacier everybody eventually ended up in the Restaurant which admittedly had a glass roof that allows you to continue to look at the glacier as you eat your food. Back on the bus and it was back to the Glacier museum that we passed on the way to the glacier. At the museum they show you a movie on five screens that was taken by ...

... the fire... the design of the stave church is so incredibly unique, i just love it! we unfortunately missed the leprosy museum... our big thing about going to bergen was to rent some kayaks and see the fjords... we missed the fjords, but managed to secure ourselves the kayaks and paddle around the archepolegos... we hit some rough water and busted our asses through it only to decide to turn around cause we weren´t ...

... It turned out to be a pleasant trip of about 45 minutes. The first half was just going through the South London suburbs. There were a lot of ratty high density housing and industrial zones. The second half was much nicer. Once we got out beyond the city, it opened up into green fields and pastures where horses and sheep were grazing. It was much like the English countryside that I had pictured. Stansted airport is I think one of the ...