Bergen, Norway

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Bergen is a beautiful city, much nicer than Oslo and the natives are rightly very proud of it. It is more cultural with art galleries, concert halls and sports areas. It is surrounded by 7 mountains and one of the local things to do is hike up and down all 7 mountains on one day. We had a tour round down town before driving to Troldhaugen, where Edvard Grieg lived for 22 years with his wife. Here he composed many of his great works. There is a life sized statue in the grounds which shows he was very small. He had a scoliosis so had the left side of his jackets padded out to disguise his curvature. He had a beautiful old house and this has been kept with all his belongings exactly as it was when he lived there. There is also a little composition hut with lovely views over the lake which must have given him inspiration. A modern concert hall has been built in the grounds but the outside is clad with turf so that it doesn't spoil the landscape. Inside we had a private concert with Knut Christian Jansson playing the Steinway piano. He played several different pieces for half an hour and explained each piece - it was a lovely treat.

We drove back to Bergen and walked round the old wooden houses built to house the traders of the Hanseatic League. They are listed buildings but have started sinking into the ground so now there is a long and slow process to jack them up and give more solid foundations to save them. It is a busy area as all the shops therein are for tourists rather than locals. There is an excellent fish market on the harbour front and lots of bars and restaurants. We decided to take the funicular (the Floibanen) up to the top of the mountain. There was a huge queue but it seemed to be moving fast so we decided to go. Beware- the queue is just to the ticket office and once inside the building there is another huge queue down to the train. The gates only allow so many people through so stick to the left side and you may get through quicker. Of course at the top there is another ginormous queue to come back down again so take in the views, have a beer or a coffee and hope it will disappear. There were 3 other large cruise ships in so the place was very busy. Our ship is tiny (see arrow on the photo). Our cruise director said he got so fed up of Americans expressing disbelief at how cute and tiny our boat was , that he started saying that it was just our tender because our ship was too big to even come near the harbour!

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