First impressions from Norway

The silence in the last days in this blog is due to the fact that I have spent several days in Norway. Therefore, it is easy to guess which is going to be the topic of the next posts... Yeah, you do not have to be a genious. Let's start with our first days there.Upon arrival to Bergen, in a very nice (and empty) flight of British Midlands from London Heathrow, we were received by the normal weather in Bergen: rain. Somewhere I have read that it rains something like 250 days throughout the year. I had heard many wonders about the second city in Norway, and especially about Bryggen (see above), a set of old houses in the harbour, dating from the Hanseatic days. I was somehow disappointed by it, in the same way I was by the castle, next to them. It is not that they are not nice, but maybe they are not so extraordinary.

But outside the area dominated by tourists, Bergen has a number of interesting places. Leaving aside the museums, for which we did not have time, and the commercial areas in the city centre, we decided to go the Aquarium, in Nordnes peninsula, running parallel to that of Bryggen. There, we got lost in narrow streets, amidst wooden houses and very nice views of the harbour. We even had the chance to see the Hurtigruten boat arriving at Bergen, at the very same time we were approaching the end of the peninsula at Nordnesparken. The area uphill from the Fish Market is also worth a visit, with some streets very step, looking like those we have often seen in movies in San Francisco.

The next day we decided to take the cable car to Floibanen to have a good panoramic view of Bergen, from Mount Floyen. Unfortunately, fog had different plans for us and we could not see anything. We decided not to go downhill immediately but to go for around and we found a lake (Skomakerdiket), which was looking quite ghostly with the fog.That day, in the evening, we took a rental car and drove to our next destination, Ulvik, in our first fiord, Eidfjord. While driving there, we started to realize some constants of our next days in Norway: impressive landscape, water everywhere, some houses with the garden on the roof, very high prices, narrow roads, a lot of caravans, most houses with the Norwegian flag in the garden,...But let's not anticipate it, let's leave something for the next posts.