Bergen - Gateway to Norway's Fjordlands

Mmmm ... I live for the breakfast buffet at the Radisson Blu at Arlanda, especially the smoked salmon. So after a leisurely breakfast, we packed and headed to the airport to catch a noon flight on SAS direct to Bergen. I have to admit that SAS didn't come off well compared to the Norwegian Airlines flights I took to and from Umea. The Norwegian planes were brand new 737-800s with free wifi access to the internet -- clean and much more comfortable. It looks like SAS will be in for some real competition in the years ahead.

Although I had a general understanding of Scandinavian geography, I couldn't really appreciate the uplifted granite spine that comprises most of Norway's land area until we flew over the top and could look down on the icefields and glaciers. Man, that's some rugged country! The picture doesn't really do the 3D scenery justice -- those narrow green valleys were carved at least 3000 feet deep in what looked like a solid rock shield running clear to the horizon.

I really didn't have a conception of what Bergen would be like before this trip. It was, in fact, a rather late addition to our itinerary and I'm pretty sure it was Gi's idea. I had mainly heard of Bergen as a place where you could catch a cruise to the fjords. I had also heard of something called the Bergen International Festival, which was some kind of arts and music event, and as luck would have it, we arrived smack in the middle of the festival. (No doubt this contributed some to the high prices for food and lodging, which the Swedes had warned us were at least 50% inflated from their own high prices, but I think it was mostly a result of lots of oil money floating around and the need to catch tourist dollars as efficiently as possible during the very short tourist season. As an example of what we were paying for food, at a mildly upscale pub on the wharf a light dinner order of fish & chips, a club sandwich and a half-liter bottle of porter was nearly $90. I would have expected to pay no more than $45 downtown in a large US city for the same meal. Fortunately, we knew what to expect before we went there.)

The city itself was lovely, but I struggled to find a comparable pace from memory. A cross between the seaport of Portland, ME and the mountains and money of Aspen came to mind. I also considered the possibility of a cold-water Punta del Este, but that wouldn't catch the working seaport nature of Bergen. I suspect that there are some strong similarities to be had with Anchorage and Juneau, but I haven't yet made it to Alaska and will so need to leave that comparison for the future. Also, none of these places could touch the history of Bergen given that the city has been around for more than 1000 years, and for a time was the capitol of Norway.

As we normally do when we travel, Gi and I hoofed it around central Bergen for most of the late afternoon and evening. After covering the wharf and castle area thoroughly, we headed to the central peninsula that splits the larger Bergen harbor and found our way to a botanical garden where a large collection of rhododendrons were in full bloom under the canopy of a conifer collection containing species from the world over.

Eventually, hunger took over and for some reason the chill air put me in the mood for Thai food. We happened on a place whose name escapes me at the moment in a small side street just out of the wharf area where I had red curry shrimp to die for. The proprietress was very friendly, which easily made up for the fact that she didn't speak a word of English. Of course, if we had really had any problems, we could have called on the lovely English teacher and her husband sitting at the next table. She was originally from Houston but had married a Norwegian and had been living in Bergen for the past 9 years. We were in complete agreement that the food packed the right amount of spice to drive the chill away.

I finished up the evening with an after-dinner cigar, watching the sunset (which if you look carefully at the clock tower in the background was a bit after 10:30). While I finished the last puffs, a beautiful 3-masted schooner sailed up and docked after a dinner cruise through the archipelago.