Nøstebukten

17/4 - Bergen for two more days
We were up early on Viking Jupiter, our very comfortable home for two weeks; I’d certainly do another cruise with them any time. A couple of things I’ve thought of about the ship: we noticed several older-than-us American men with white hair in varying length pony tails, must be a trend. And I watched the kitchen crew making scrambled eggs while I was waiting for my omelette this morning: he had the egg mix in a big bowl, spooned it out onto a flat hotplate, used a paint scraper to push it into the centre, mixed it all around and voila! Instant scrambled eggs ready for a heated dish and put out onto the buffet hotplates. Fast and effective, and tasty because I tried some.

Anyway, we had to be out of our rooms by 8am, had breakfast, collected our bags from the terminal, grabbed a cab and headed for the hotel. First thing to say…….cab fares are extortionate, around $35NZ for a very short trip but it looks as though they have a minimum charge. However, they’re a must when we have bags to carry.

https://en.dethanseatiskehotel.no/history.html Booking the hotel I was looking for location, breakfast included, price, good reviews and maybe quirky, and we got all of that for sure. The hotel is 300 years old and one of the few buildings to have survived numerous big fires, as well as the giant 1944 explosion, though we were told half of it dates from the 1950’s in a post-fire rebuild. Our room was in the old part, really big with two comfy armchairs, a big bathroom with a clawfoot tub and very good shower. The whole room had underfloor heating, bed was typical queen size with individual duvets, comfy mattress. BUT like a lot of hotels the lighting was abysmal, low wattage bulb in the centre and a row of weak pot lights on one side, bedside lamps and a floor lamp that Pete said ‘I’ll put that lamp on’ and it was already turned on! We looked in the cupboard in the evening to find a jug and tea bags and had to turn on our TORCH to see what was there! No kidding.

The room had bare pine boards on the walls but fortunately not the 1700s wind whistling through – in the 2000’s reno they had insulated the place very well with what looked like wool in the cracks. There was a huge wooden ‘knee’ holding up the ceiling joists, we learned afterwards these are tree roots. Its definitely a bit tired but clean and tidy. They’ve taken over the equally-old building next door and put a glass roof over the narrow alleyway in-between, a couple of walkways across, a lift, and there’s the hotel doubled in size.

Having dropped our bags off we walked a couple of hundred meters to the funicular base and went up Mt Floyen for a look at the view so that was two hours well spent. We could have walked down but didn’t realise you could do that so had return tickets, but we had a good walk around at the top, had a leisurely cuppa, admired and patted the very tame goats, and spent quite a while talking to a pleasant American couple who were getting ready to go onto Jupiter for the trip to Stockholm. There are several running, walking and biking trails, people in Bergen are outdoor freaks and right into extreme uphill exertion, to put it mildly. There was a great playground for kids and a rather large, friendly troll…….

We got a text saying the 4.30pm walking tour we’d booked was cancelled due to lack of numbers so we rebooked for Tuesday then pottered around the town, mainly in search of a watch battery for Pete which we eventually found, he had to change it himself which took a while but the man in the electrical shop provided a magnetic screwdriver and I eventually helped with the tiny screws – it filled in time. Souvenir shops are all the same price, all the same stuff, good quality and hugely expensive, as is, we are learning, everything in Norway.

The electrical shop was in a big mall with a supermarket in the basement so I wrote down some prices and these are the equivalent NZ prices: Mandarins $5, kumara $6.13, spuds $3.80, Royal Gala apples (not nice looking, and not NZ) $5, 6 x very manky dry-looking Pink Lady apples $7.60, 1.5L coke $4.60, 1 only bottle Bundaberg ginger beer $6.30, Lays chippies $7.60, Jif $6.15 or own brand cleaner $3, Patak sauce $4.60, 60g cat Temptations $4.60, 12 eggs $7.60 or $9.20, 2L ice cream $9.20, 1 x cucumber $5.35

McDonald’s for lunch, that was the easiest thing to do. We heard a couple of times about Macca’s being the American Embassy, and one of the guides told us in Bergen Bill Clinton wanted a change from Norwegian food so off he went to Macca’s for lunch. Then our room was ready in the hotel so time for life admin i.e. Pete getting the SIM card up and running which took a fair bit of time. We had to get one because our roaming doesn’t extend to Norway, Denmark or Poland and it wanted auto renewal at the end of every month which he wasn’t prepared to do, so it took a while but we are connected.

Decided then to go for a walk and ended up being out for a couple of hours just strolling, stopping to look, went through part of the Nordnes area which is the walking tour area, but of course had no idea what we were seeing. There was a convenience store called 'Kiwi', appropriately green, and I understand it's a chain, googled it later and found out it comes from the founders' names Kirke and Wilke, but 'everybody knows' that kiwis are clean and green and it embodies that too. Closest to the waterfront in the Bryggen area especially the outdoor seating in bars and eating places were chocka and we reeled at the price of mains in some places the equivalent of about $60 for something fairly basic. We weren’t hungry so had a tasty filled croissant and a drink and that was all we needed. Back to the hotel, watched a couple of downloaded episodes of ‘Madame Blanc’ and that was it.Read more