I can’t wrap up my posts about Norway without mentioning Bergen, our favorite city of the trip. It was adorable, charming, vibrant, historic, and fun – everything a European city should be.
There’s a small market for extremely fresh fish (and other stuff, like local knitwear and cloudberry jam) downtown.
This was a gorgeous sunset to watch, sitting outside and sipping 10-euro beers. We sipped slowly.
This area is called the Bryggen, and greedy German merchants from the Hanseatic League used to live here and make lots of money trading dried Norwegian fish (meanwhile the Norwegians were too drunk to figure out how to do this job themselves). We learned a lot about this history while in Bergen, mainly from the (free-with-admission English daily at 10:00am) tour we took of the Hanseatic Museum, which was also where we came across these creepy flying dried fish:
Bergen also had a fabulous art museum, where we say several Munchs and other works by Norwegian and international artists. Good stuff.
We traveled to Bergen from Oslo via train, making a detour to take the Flåm railway down into the Aurlandsfjord and then a boat through the Nærøyfjord. While the fjords were quite lovely, I could have skipped this part of the trip. We got enough fjord in during our Hurtigruten ride, and the Flåm railway was not as impressive as I was expecting, most likely because of all the crazy mountain railways we experienced during out two years in Switzerland. Plus I could have done without the 6:30am train departure from Oslo.
Overall we really loved our trip to Norway (if you haven’t gathered that yet from the gazillions of posts I’ve made about it). I think I need to go back sometime during the midnight sun (or perhaps the Arctic winter – although that’s probably less fun, northern lights notwithstanding). But first I need to win the lottery – Norway is expensive!
Kick the Baby
Oslo
No bras allowed?
The Hurtigruten
The Lofoten Islands
Å i Lofoten
More Norway trip photos on Flickr
Thank you for sharing your beautiful photos of your trip. I am dying to visit Norway and enjoyed every single one of your posts.
Thanks, Pumpkin! Glad to hear someone likes hearing me regurgitate trip details. 🙂
What city is the last picture of? It looks idyllic, with the river running through a narrow valley…
I’m not sure if it’s technically part of Flåm, or a separate village, but it is part of the view towards the bottom of the Flåm Railway.
I’m with pumpkin – gorgeous pictures, though I keep searching for the village’s Babykicking field.
Beautiful pictures. We are still trying to decide if Norway is where we want to go next year. I’m a bit hesitant because of the prices. We really like to experience the food and it doesn’t sound like we’d be able to do much of that with 10 euro beers. 🙂
Looks like you got lucky in Bergen–where it rains 265 days a year. We were not so lucky in June–it rained almost non-stop our 3 days there.
Mark – it’s there in the back…
Lori – you could approach it as a detox period, and just skip the beers all together. 🙂 But seriously, it is quite the expensive destination, even compared with the rest of Western Europe. But so beautiful…
Swiss Miss – we were so lucky weather-wise this trip. Sun sun sun and more sun, with just enough clouds to make for dramatic sunsets. Sorry you weren’t as lucky!
I love the pictures you have been putting up – thanks for such a keen insight into your trip! 10 euro beers – yes, sip veryyyy slowly. When my norweigan friends come here, they go nuts on alcohol. A 12 pack of beer here is the same as 1 beer in Norway, so when they first come, they tend to drink themselves silly. It is hilarious to watch! I’m always DD.
The last picture there in your post is simply amazing. And beautiful! Makes me want to go! But not if beers are 10 Euro.
NewWrldYankee – I can imagine! If I lived in Norway, I’d probably binge drink whenever I went anywhere else, too.
Lulu – just think of it as a detox vacation. 🙂