Norway - Part 4 - Bergen (25 June)

We arrived at our campsite in Bergen a little late.  It was an amazing location - Grimen Camping, right on the edge of the Grimevatnet lake.  It wasn't too badly prices (about 950kr a night for a small cabin) and not too far from Bergen.  We chose the campsite cabin as the apartments and hotels in Bergen were very expensive.

After a decent nights sleep, we headed into Bergen and it was pouring!  The most ironic thing was that today was midsummer day.  I don't think I've ever seen such heavy rain.  Initially we tried to keep out of the worst of it, but it showed no signs of slowing down, so we just ignored it and enjoyed our day.  When we returned to the cabin that afternoon, we hung all of our clothes up and turned up the heaters - they took all day to fully dry (with all heaters cranked to the maximum setting.)

Heading into Bergen, before the rain got super heavy

Lovely midsummer's day

Bergen is a historic port in Norway that is believed to have originated as a trading port in 1070 and was Norway's capital in the 13th century.  The remaining quay, Bryggen, is a World Heritage site.

Our first stop was the historic Fish Market (Fisketorget) which originated from 1276:

Fisketorget

Some of the produce

Looking up the mountains behind Bryggan

Turns out this really cool gingerbread-ish building is a Starbucks

We did come across a shop selling some pretty scary clowns, like this one grinding on a trumpet:

And his evil puppet-master friend

Looking down Bryggan

Trolls were pretty common souvenirs - this shop had a pretty cool Troll Cave

Bryggan

An alley between buildings in Bryggan

An example of the rain - and this was a slower patch:

Next we took the Fløibanen Funicular railway up to the top of Mount Fløyen.  The line is 844m long and goes 302m up the mountain.

Waiting for the funicular

Here it comes

Once at the top, the rain didn't let up - and the main view was covered with fog.  We managed to get some nice shots when it cleared, but we didn't take any of the walking trails due to the weather.  Most of the photos were taken with my water proof camera, rather than Kris' much better one:

View of Bergen from the top

On the viewing platform

Bergen - with Kris' better zoom

The kids made a new friend

Despite our warnings, Tomas used a slide.  He got a little wet

The fog set back in

And the rain:

More fog

Bergen from half-way up

Bergen from half-way up

Going down

Here's our video of the trip down (Compressed badly to get the 450Mb file to work with Blogger's 90Mb limit - so sorry for the poor quality):

We got absolutely drenched heading back to the car, but luckily Kris had thought to pack spare clothes.  One we got back to the cabin we took some photos of the area and then had a restful afternoon before the huge drive the next day.

View out of our window

No driving done today, except for a small amount in and out of Bergen.