Bergen City Scandic

... just wait. I was prepared to sleep on their couch and gladly not pay, but finally at about 1030 I was told they had a bed for me. The good karma I have been collecting seems to have paid off. I have seen many people like myself come into the hostel with online bookings that were left without beds… a bit ridiculous. But luck was on my side, and now I could relax …in the 63 bed dorm. Luckily it wasn’t ...

... we stopped for 5 minutes and I got out and actually touched snow - a first for me! It was old wet snow, but hey, it was snow. The countryside changed to a barren landscape with rock and snow.

The Flåm railway was stunning - rushing waterfalls amongst snow capped green mountains. Once at Flåm we changed to a ferry for 2 hours on a fjord - it was beautiful. And then, when I thought it could not get any better we arrived by ...

... and his bus would be the one I needed to take into town. Thankfully most Norwegians speak English and are not too unsympathetic to tourists who cannot speak their language! Once in Town the first stop was Bocca's, Frank's place of work, to drop off my travel-pack which would be stored safely in the office until later... and to have a couple of welcoming beers. The Bar was not ...

... considering it sounds like a pretty unsexy language. After the tour, I returned to the Bergen museum to see some of the exhibits we had skipped. One special exhibit talked of modern witch hunts - it ended with a short movie on McCarthyism, and its witch hunt for Communist in the USA. It asked if we would look back on today's war on terror the same way, 50 years from now? New bunkmates - Stuart, a Civil Engineer ...

... I also learned that in Norway one of the most popular musical instruments is the fiddle, however, when the Christians came in and started ruling the country they banned fiddles because they said it was from satin. The reasoning behind this was that typically when alcohol was involved people would pull out their instruments and play very sad songs about lost love and ...

... whatever way you like to drink is the way you drink", i guess I'm the its over in a matter of seconds kind of guy...hahaha!! At one point Johan bought me a Kilkenny beer so i could get a taste of home, and when i thanked him he said that i could buy him a Swedish beer when he come to Dublin sometime. I didn't have the heart to disappoint him by saying that we dint have Swedish beers in Ireland in the pubs so i deftly changed the topic slightly by telling him that id buy him a pint ...

... tempo, intet hastverk. Ser ut som om vi har funnet rytmen til turen. På veien ned kom vi gjennom til en mark full av krokus - vakkert. Snakkes underveis. Hildegunn og Tor Fredag 7.mars - 16 dager igjen Forleden skrev jeg at våren var her. Denne uken slo vinteren til med snø og kaos. Krampetrekninger og krydder i hverdagen. En dag vi husker i motsetning til alle de grå hverdagene i vinter ...

... Brygge museum, which documented what life was like in the brygge back then. We also walked through the center of town and over to the Norges peninsula. The Norges peninsula had some great little victorian houses lining these alleys up on the hill overlooking the harbour and was really pretty. They also had a funicular up to the top of the hill overlooking town, but we decided to skip that in the rain. The next day we embarked on the "Royal ...

... spending too much time there. When we finished eating, we headed up to the funicular. Once on the top, we gazed over Bergen. It was beautiful, I can't imagine what it is like with clear skies! I really enjoyed being able to make it up there and it was a great way to look at the other 6 mountains and the start of the fjords. Although, it isn't as visible as I may make it out to be. ;) We headed back down and started our souvenir shopping. I wasn't up for expensive pewter cheese slicers ...