Bergen, Norway

September 16, 2009, Wednesday
Bergen, Norway

We’ve had a super day in Bergen. It has rained off and on all day but that didn’t deter us in the least. Our hotel is only a ten minute walk from the absolute heart of town and we got going early and have wandered and shopped and been sightseeing all day long. We are back now and both of us are pooped but feel that we have “done” Bergen. Wow, has it ever grown since I was last here (30+ years ago). The fish market is still a smelly place but isn’t as offensive to me as it was way back when!!

We found some really good shopping here and availed ourselves of the best prices we’ve seen in a while!! And the goods were of good quality, so that is a plus. We are both delighted to be off the ship and back on stable ground!

I have been seeing shrimp sandwiches and they have looked good but I just haven’t had the opportunity to try them until last night. We went into our hotel’s restaurant and the menu looked absolutely atrocious. I was ready to walk out but we had passed some of these yummy looking shrimp sandwiches on the way in to the restaurant. They were on a tray ready to be served to a group in a meeting hall. So I asked the waiter if we could have those instead of food off the menu and guess what!! He got us each a couple of them and they were just as good as I had imagined. AND the bonus is that now I’ve had shrimp sandwiches!! We haven’t decided what we are going to do for dinner tonight as the menu is the same at our hotel and there aren’t any restaurants near by that we’ve seen. About the only choices around here are fish or fish!! This is a fishy town and they seem to live on fish. Of course, I wouldn’t care if I never had a fish ever, so this isn’t my favorite kind of place to find food.

Tomorrow we officially start to come home. We will fly out to Oslo and then start driving back towards Paris. In some ways I’m REALLY glad to be going home but in other ways this has been a marvelous trip and I’m sorry to see it end.