Saturday, April 21 2018

After a bad night we take a late start and go down to breakfast at 10:00. The hotel has a great breakfast buffet in my opinion. Liked it very much and had a good start in the day.

Our plan for the morning is a tour up to Fløyen with the funicular and a walk down to the city again. The funicular is only a 10 minutes walk away. It will take you up to the top at 320 meters in just a few minutes. And for Norway it is reasonable priced. 50 kr for a one way trip.

A beautiful view over the city from the top. I don’t want to be here in the high season when all the Norway in a nutshell tourists invade Bergen. But today it is perfect. After I found my Geocache in top (Norgesboks) and Simon left some travel bugs we chose the walk down on the winding trail.

Half way down is a sign to the biggest tree in Norway (hot highest), but the trail is closed. That doesn’t stop us from going around the fence (there was no sign saying du ikke skal gå der) and we find the tree 200 meters inn. Unfortunately no GPS signal here otherwise I could have made a new Guestbook for the Norwegian app here.

Walking down on the steep trail, a lot of stairs. Some nice houses here, but it must be a pain in the behind in winter.

Getting some drinks at a supermarket and a few geocaches later we are at the farmers market at Bryggen. But first we went to Bergenshus fortress. On the way we pick up some geocaches. Simon had found some before, but doesn’t help me to much. I think he enjoyed me searching at the wrong place. 🙂 The farmers market offers nice stuff, but we go for two sveler each with fresh sour cream and home made jam. Very very tasty.

Back to the hotel through some more smaller streets for a break and a shift of shirt for me. On our way we checked out the homepage for Escape Bryggen for an evening activity. We saw it yesterday on our walk and neither of us has done that before. But no openings today. On the other hand, there are openings for tomorrow morning and we chose to book a room to escape from before we have to go to the airport.

But for now we leave to walk the 1,5 km walk to Bergen Aquarium at the end of Nordnes. We have a couple of hours before they close. The aquarium is not as good as the one in Ålesund. The entrance area is quiet depressing and I can’t imagine that the animals feel good here. Concrete and small pools, dirty windows. Inside it is a little bit better. Different exhibitions on two-three levels. We go for the feeding of some monkeys and take a tour to see all aquariums and terrariums. Again, Ålesund is better – but it is not as bad as the outside area suggested. Our visit is concluded with some ice cream and the feeding of the penguins (not with our ice cream…).

Back to the hotel and getting ready for dinner. I found a Brazilian restaurant close to the hotel and remembering the food from Prague we go there. But no food without reservation. We have to turn and find another place to eat. We find a place at the fish market that has several option. Pubs and restaurant. We go for the Italian restaurant and are very pleased with the food. I take the veal and we both try the pannacotta. Very good food!

We want to conclude the evening in a pub downstairs. There is some karaoke going on (special kind of people doing this) and after some time we go outside. But in the end we return to the hotel after a short time. Not the right vibe/mood – not to describe. So we get some good sleep this night (after last night was but short).