August 11, 2013.

We got up today in Bergen.  Notice I said, “Got up”.  We did not really wake up because we had really not gone to sleep!  Let me explain.  We started yesterday August 10^th in Oslo and drove 7 hours to Bergen.  The drive was beautiful so we stopped to take many photos of the sites including the tallest water falls in Norway, the Voringsfossen which is 586 feet tall, one of Norway’s 900 glaciers, the Hardangervidda which covers 73 square kilometers, and many of Norway’s 450,000 fresh water lakes.  We also saw bull crossing, moose crossing, deer crossing and several other animal crossing signs along the way.  With all this hard work photographing, we did not arrive in Bergen until late on Saturday night and the Saturday night binge drinking party was in full swing.  Also, there was some festival going on, so Bergen was packed.  I had booked a hotel room but upon entering the building, I took the lift to the 5th floor, and searched for at least 10 minutes trying to locate the staircase to the 6th floor because no signs directed me to the staircase when I exited the lift.  After traversing the length of 4 hallways on the 5th floor, I located the first of two flights of steps.  I walked up the two flights of steps and located the door to my suite.  The door opened into a small vestibule that contained a very narrow spiral staircase to the next floor.  The spiral steps were so narrow and steep that I had trouble negotiating them and realized that our luggage would never make it up the tiny narrow spiral staircase.  Once I reached the next floor, there was a sitting room, bathroom and bedroom (OK, this would be considered a suite, I guess).  These three rooms were located under the roof and the ceilings were slanted so that full headroom was only available in the center of each room.  More importantly none of the rooms had any windows.  Two of the rooms had tiny ceiling skylights that were covered with dirt so badly I could hardly see through them. The skylights were very tiny which gave me concerns about how to exit the room in the event of a fire.  I returned to reception and advised the clerk that the room was unacceptable and left the hotel.  The clerk said nothing to me in response.  After leaving the hotel, I was sitting in my car in front of the hotel discussing the problems with the room with Rita when the clerk tapped on my car window, and advised me that she had “miraculously located a standard room” for me in the hotel. (Mind you there were NO STANDARD rooms available when booking!)  I pretty much told her to … well, you know the rest.  So…. Rita sat in the car using her IPhone’s  “Around Me“ app and searched hotels as I walked to door to door to each hotel trying to find a room for the night.  It took us several hours to get the last available room in Bergen which was located near the harbor and is lovely, looks like a scene from a movie set in coastal Maine, and on the main square.  After a quick bite to eat in Cafe Opera where we had to change tables because they turn the place into a disco at 11:30 PM, we jumped into bed and laid there until 6:00AM waiting for the drunks in the main square outside our hotel room window to go home.  Boy, were we relieved when it finally got quiet.  Unfortunately, the city of Bergen’s cleaning crew began work outside our hotel window at 6:30 AM with the street washer; so, it was a very long night to say the least.

We definitely got out of there quickly and headed to our next destination, to see the largest fjord.

Miss you all, Norm and Rita

View from the Ferry Boat.

City of Sogndal

Sogndal stave church

Side view of stave church from the 12th century.

Bergen was very pretty even though it was a very foggy day!

Bergen harbor

Bergen harbor

Bergen harbor