Hey everyone! It's been a couple of weeks, but I am finally catching up on my posts from our trip to Denmark and Norway. I hope you enjoy my stories from Bergen :)
Friday March 2
We had originally planned to leave for Bergen on Thursday night, and take an overnight train. However, while doing some research, we learned that the train ride from Oslo to Bergen is supposed to be the most beautiful in the world. We realized we couldn't miss that kind of opportunity, and so changed our itinerary so that we could take the train during the day. We left the Airbnb at about 7am, and caught the train leaving for Bergen at 8. The whole ride took about six hours, and it was definitely worth it! I am the kind of person who usually falls right to sleep on trains and planes, but I could barely close my eyes because I didn't want to miss any of the scenery.
We arrived in Bergen around 2pm and made our way right to the Airbnb. For this particular Airbnb, we tried to save as much money as possible, and so we ended up renting a single room in a bigger apartment. Four people in one room was definitely a lot, but we made it work and since we were basically going to be in the room just to sleep it seemed like a good choice. After we dropped our bags off at the Airbnb, we headed back to the city centre to get some food and to explore the area a little bit.
My first impression of Bergen was that it is a small city with lots of history. We quickly learned though, that the city is actually much larger than you would expect, with over 400 000 inhabitants and is the second largest city in Norway, after Oslo. We found a restaurant that served traditional Norwegian food which, as you would expect, is mostly fish and seafood-based. Lucky for me, there were also some vegetarian options! On our way to the restaurant, we came upon the old Bergen Fortress, and decided to take a walk up to the top. The museum was closed for the day, but most of the area is used as a park so we were able to explore and get some cool views of the city. After dinner, we headed back to the Airbnb for an early night.
Saturday March 3
This morning we had pre-booked a fjord cruise. When we were planning the trip, our main motivation for visiting Bergen was so that we could see some fjords. The cruise was recommended by a friend of mine who is studying in Bergen this semester, and it definitely did not disappoint. The whole tour lasted about three hours, and took us down one of the big fjords near Bergen, Osterfjorder, which is about 27km long.
The tour left right from the harbour in Bryggen, which is the old area of the city. I thought this was pretty cool, because on our way out we got a nice view of the city from the water. At the end of the fjord is the second smallest town in Norway, Modalen. We all thought it was pretty cool that we got to see Modalen, because when we were on the Lapland trip, we visited the smallest village in Norway, Bugoynes. So, after the whole trip, I've now seen the two largest and two smallest dwellings in Norway!The cruise was absolutely breathtaking. I have never seen a landscape like that before and even though it was freezing on the top of the boat, we spent most of the tour outside. We all took a ton of pictures, but I don't think any of them really show how incredible the views really were.
After the cruise, we grabbed some lunch. None of us wanted to go back to the Airbnb, so we spent the rest of the afternoon touring the old parts of the city. Just like Copenhagen, the old part of Bergen felt very much like a classic European city, with the colourful houses and cobblestone streets. We visited the university campus as well, which was pretty neat. There were tons of opportunities for pictures, and it was generally a pretty relaxing afternoon.
Kayla, Franziska and Jayme wanted to have some more seafood for dinner, so we headed to the Fish Market which is right on the harbour of Bergen. It's a pretty cool atmosphere. In the summer, it's an outdoor market but in the winter it's closed off with glass walls. I did some reading about the market and I think the market has been around since about the 1200s, although the building is very new and modern.
Our last event of the day was a visit to the Bergen Ice Bar. This is a pretty cool company, that hires ice sculptors to construct an entire bar out of ice! All the walls, seats and tables are made of ice, and the drinks are even served in glasses made of ice. When you go in, they give you a big parka and you can then go into the bar and enjoy some drinks. I've never heard of anything like this before, so it was a pretty cool (in both senses of the word) experience. We all had a good time, but when we got back to the Airbnb we all went straight to sleep!
Sunday March 4
For our last day in Bergen, we all really wanted to visit some of the museums and also climb one of the mountains surrounding the city.
We decided to start with the museums. The first museum we saw was the Old Bergen Museum, which is an open-air museum that has over 50 original wooden houses from Bergen. For those of you reading from Ottawa and Ontario, this museum reminded me a lot of Upper Canada Village, in the sense that it's a reconstructed town. Sadly, there are only actors working there during the summer months so we weren't able to get that real old-timey feel. We still got to look at all the old houses though, and got a real sense of what Bergen must have looked like a few hundred years ago.
To continue our museum tour, we headed back to the fortress that we saw on the first day. Since it was daytime during this visit, we got the chance to actually visit the Rosenkrantz Tower. This tower was part of the fortress and was also build during the 1200s, although it was renovated many times since then. The whole tower is open to the public and you can walk all the way from the basement dungeon to the roof. During the 1200s, the King of Norway lived in the tower and today the tower is considered one of the most significant Renaissance buildings in the country. I really liked visiting the tower because there was a lot of information on every level, but the building still felt authentic. Our views from the roof weren't as nice as I expected, because there is a lot of construction on the outside of the tower right now, but from what I could see, we were pretty much the highest building around.
Our last museum visit was the Bryggens Museum, which was built over the remains of the first settlement in Bergen. Like other cities, Bergen was originally built completely out of wood and because of this it has burned down more than once. It was actually really cool to see the original foundations of buildings from the 1100s-1200s. There were also a ton of artefacts like clothing, coins and different tools throughout the whole museum.
After this last museum, we finally headed up to the top of Mount Floyen. Luckily for us, there is a funicular that starts right in the city centre, and takes you part of the way up the mountain, so we didn't have to hike the whole thing. From the funicular, the views of Bergen were pretty good, but there are a ton of different trails and paths that take you further up the mountain. Cross-country skiing is also really popular, especially in Bergen, so we saw a lot of people coming up the funicular with their skis.
We ended up finding a path through the forest that wasn't actually a real path. For a while, we weren't sure if we would make it out of the forest but after about fifteen minutes, we found our way to a real trail up the mountain. It wasn't a hard hike, but the snow was really deep so if you stepped off the path at all you sank right into the snow! The views from the top of the mountain were pretty spectacular. I think it's so cool that we were able to get so many different perspectives on the same city.
After taking in the views and getting some good pictures, we headed back down the mountain and down the funicular to find some dinner. After that, we headed back to the Airbnb for our last night before travelling home to Jyvaskyla.
Monday March 5
Today we had to pack up and make our way to the airport. Our flight left at 1pm, so we didn't have to rush anything in the morning which was really nice. We made it back to Helsinki around 5pm or so. Our original plan was to go from Helsinki straight back to Jyvaskyla, but we had to make a little detour. Since we are heading to Russia, Kayla, Franziska and I had to stop in Tampere to drop off our visa applications and passports. Luckily, Tampere is on the way to Jyvaskyla from Helsinki, so it was an easy train ride - but it did add an extra night onto our adventure.
Thanks for reading, I know this post was pretty late but I hope you enjoyed it all the same. We are heading out early tomorrow morning for a week-long trip to Russia, so I'll try and keep on top of the posts! Stay tuned :)
