The ship can dock at various locations around the pier, so be prepared to a walk. We were scheduled to do a GPS hike at Mt. Ulriken, taking a local bus and a cable car in order to get there. However, due to the rain, we decided against this activity and headed into town with some friends along the Skoltegrunskaien Pier/waterfront.
About a 15 minute walk brought us to the Fish Market area, at which point we looked for our vendor to see if we could just do the GPS sightseeing in town but couldn’t find the office for Bergen Base Camp (www.bergenbasecamp.com; anne@bergenbasecamp.no). We did find the Tourist Information office, but it was very crowded (Bergen is the 2nd largest city in Norway) so we wandered through the fish market, admiring the different offerings and were stunned by the stratospheric prices. We then decided to head on over to the Funicular Station (about 150 meters from the Fish Market), hoping that by the time we got tickets (80 NOK pp) and got up to the Mt. Floyen viewpoint, the rain would have let up and the fog would be gone. Line was not as long as anticipated – probably due to the weather and lack of visibility – and we were up on top before noon. The ride up was actually a little different in that we passed through several tunnels that went under various roads in town before beginning the main part of the ‘climb’ up to the top. At the viewpoint, we walked around a bit; one of our group went a little further into the nicely wooded area and discovered that there were rope ‘bridges’ to walk along, very large wood sculptures of trolls and other ‘creatures’, large rocks painted as trolls… and with the fog and mist, it all had a very magical and fairy tale quality to it – great photo op! After about 20 minutes of wandering we had decided to go back down the funicular when all of a sudden, the rain stopped, the fog lifted and we had the most amazing view of Bergen! Everything we had hoped for! Back in town, we wandered through the various shops and discovered Håkonshallen and Rosenkrantz Tower, part of Bergen’s fortifications, and Bryggen, which is the site of an old Hanseatic wharf and merchants’ buildings. The old timber originals of the merchant buildings were destroyed by fire in 1702 but rebuilt (typical Norwegian history – can’t be trusted with fire!). Most of the buildings are now tourist souvenir shops these days, although there are a few left that are just historical and / or museums. Since this was our final port, we did do some shopping, trying to spend whatever NOK we had left.
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