Beautiful Bergen! Little did we know that Bergen's lush, sunny days would be the last we would see of warmth and blue skies for over two weeks in Norway. Naive tourists, we thought that every square meter of grass in every park in all of Norway must be covered with sun-reddening Norwegians. We had no grasp of the rarity of the occasion. (Silly us!)
Ten-thirty at night, and, while no longer exactly sun-drenched, it was still not dark. "Let's go have a drink," Dan suggested after dinner. "Dan," I moaned, "I'm tired. You must be tired too. We're jet-lagged. Let's go to bed." "I can't go to bed," he complained. "It's not dark out." Nor would it be for the next two weeks. Would jet lag be just the beginning of what looked to become a truly monstrous experience in sleep deprivation?
The next night at about the same time, we watched the outdoor cafe across the street, which appeared not to have an empty table. "Is it like this all summer long?" Dan asked our friendly waitress. "Oh yes," she enthused. "We like to stay outdoors in the summer! We like to go out and drink." That sounded like fun, but we thought about the compensating dark days of winter and asked, "What do you do in the winter?" "Oh," she answered sorrowfully, "then we stay indoors and drink." Sounded reasonable to me.
The main tourist attraction in Bergen is the UNESCO World Heritage Bryggen, the old Hanseatic wharves from Bergen's swansong trading days as a center of salt cod shipping. The wharves now lean every which way but are meticulously maintained board by board and fastener by fastener to be exactly the same as they were when built.
Other points of interest for us included the morning fish market and a most lively travel agency building.
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On to the next day's travel ("Norway in a Nutshell")