Yesterday, we had a very quiet day - attended the first cruise critic meeting and lunch for this sector - played cards with Joanne and Garry - and then went to trivia. Robert was running the trivia and the questions were so hard that the highest score was 7 - we received 4 - Robert’s said that he was out for revenge - cause he runs the disco and not many passengers go to the disco!!
Today, we are in Bergen, our only Scandinavian port, a quaint town - the second largest in Norway - it is the first time that Dawn Princess has been to Bergen - so we were made very welcome - with a free shuttle bus into the city centre - welcome signs in many businesses, a brass band as we left and much horn blowing between ships. Located on a beautiful fjord, bergen started as a fishing village, and was once a setting off point for Viking raiders - today, it is also a tourist destination - with many souvenir shops selling trolls, viking memorabilia and hand knitted woollen scarves, gloves, mittens and jumpers - lovely, but I don’t think we would get much use out of them at home in our climate. There are also lots of craft shops - I guess with the long winters - crafts are popular - and the hand knitted jumpers were lovely, but expensive. We are in ‘the land of the midnight sun’ - it was light when we went to bed after 11.00pm. and was light when I woke up at 4.00am., so I don’t know how many hours of darkness that we had last night.
We left the ship as soon as clearance was received to travel to the top of the mountain above Bergen via the funicular railway, the Floibanen, for spectacular views of the fjords and the quaint city - brightly coloured houses with steep pitched roofs against a backdrop of the greenest pine trees that I have ever seen. Just as we arrived at the gate to go back down to the city, six buses from Princess arrived, resulting in a very long queue - once again we patted ourselves on the back for beating the crowds.
We walked around the streets taking in the sights and enjoying all the opportunities to take photos with picture postcard views around every corner and visited the castle and cathedral. The street names are soooo long, we had fun trying to pronounce them - maybe you would like to try! Amongst all the white and pastel coloured houses one really stood out cause it was painted black with red trim - I just had to go up the steep side street to check it out - it was the Witchy Bitchy Tattoo parlour!!
It was a bright sunny day when we left the ship, and you would like to think that we learned our lesson, when we didn’t take the umbrella to London - but no such luck - we left it on the ship - the black clouds soon gathered and as the rain began to fall, we found a delightful cafe for a coffee break, drawn in by the enticing smell of cooking cinnamon buns.
We had been warned that everything was expensive in Norway - still, we were shocked when 4 coffees and 3 buns came to about 44 aussie dollars and a diet coke was $8 (42 krone). There was intermittent rain and sun for the rest of the day, so we had a number of visits to the delightful cafes. The young teenage girls serving us were extremely friendly and polite and they all had the most beautiful clear porcelain skin and rosy cheeks - with perfect English (I thought that they had a British accent) which they learn at school from an early age. I embarrassed myself by asking one girl what part of England she was from, and she replied that she was from Norway and had never been to England.
The main industry in the area is fishing, and the fish markets around the bay were filled with smoked salmon, fresh fish, enormous crab claws, and jars of caviar - whale meat and even reindeer, moose and whale sausages - the seafood looked to be great quality and very fresh - although the prices are very expensive compared to the Aussie prices. Some passengers tried whale meat - said it was a bit like the texture of beef rather than fish - some liked it and others didn’t - I didn’t want to try it - after all the adverse publicity about whaling in Australia, it didn’t feel right to eat it.
We had a spectacular sail out of Bergen through a winding channel surrounded by beautiful cliffs and small islands. As we left the fjord, the Captain announced that he had been told by the pilot that there were about 40-50 whales in the area on the previous afternoon - we were then on high alert, but didn’t see any whales - just a group of cheeky seagulls who followed us and dived to get bread from passengers hands.
Overall, another fabulous day followed by a great sailaway party on the back deck. Some of you may also be following Philip’s blog - he was supposed to board in Amsterdam, but couldn’t due to the ship not stopping - finally he made his way to Bergen after 11 1/2 hours traveling and was heartily welcomed at our sailaway!!
Tomorrow is a sea day and then we dock in Greenock in Scotland, we have a tour to Edinburgh booked - a sleep in is definitely on our schedule before we have three port days in a row.
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