One Day to Spend in Bergen

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Bergen looks so incredibly charming in the tourist brochures, with the wooden Bryggen area and all the artisan workshops there, and the old fortress. I was so excited to come here, but now that I"m here, I kinda wish we had left earlier and gone to Iceland. I'm glad that we came to the fjords, but I'm not loving Norway the way I loved Copenhagen, and the whole family is definitely "museum'ed" out.

That said, we have now learned sadly that our son is afraid of any "dark" place (which includes most museums), and he's also easily bored at this point in the trip, so we decided not to go into any museums. We walked through the fortress area, through the Bryggen area, to a few souvenir shops (he likes those), but no museums. That leaves one with very little to do in Bergen. We did discover that, away from the touristy waterfront, there are a lot of cute little shops and restaurants, on cobblestoned streets. It's all very cute and we may have loved it before kids.

You know what, I saw these museums on TV with Rick Steves so I'm not missing anything and I'm saving money.

As we were walking around, Kai really wanted to go to the dock and look at the boats, and he was pulling us and shouting. Yes, misbehavior - but he's only four. We can handle him. But some old tourist (because the vast majority of people travelling in Norway appear to be over 65) gets down to his level and shushes him right in his face in a mean way. So between that in Bergen, and the tick in Balestrand, Kai is just about done with Norway.

We might go up the Floibanen later. I think that would be fun.

Last night we did find a nice little Italian place, had some great pizza and a bottle of wine. that will be my good memory of Bergen. I also have found the people to be very nice (contrary to the depiction of Norwegians as cold). They are just a smidge more reserved than the Danes, but still very helpful and friendly.

Another happy moment I had was visiting the Body Shop (on my own, to get conditioner and hand-creme, as I ran out). It was typical amazing customer service, although I spent WAY too much money. I just did the conversion and I want to kick myself. I don't even want to admit here what i spent on a tube of lipgloss, handcreme, a travel-size shower gel and conditioner. It's embarrassing. Oh well!

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