Beautiful but Dangerous Bergen

by Jim Bellomo | Jun 29, 2024 | Uncategorized

For this post, I am going to tell you about our visit to Bergen right up until it became the worst day of the trip for me. It could have been much worse, but thankfully it wasn’t. We did like the city; I am just not that impressed with some of the populace.

We arrived early on Thursday. Of course, I was awake and took photos out on the deck in front of the Explorer’s Lounge.

Please excuse this editorial interruption, but I want to mention something while I am writing about the beautiful deck in front of the Explorer’s Lounge on deck seven.  About 90% of the photos I have taken while sailing into and out of someplace have been taken from that deck. It is easily accessible to every person on the ship. Anyone can go to the Explorer’s Lounge, open one of two doors and step out onto that deck for a beautiful view ahead of the ship. I point this out because on our former favorite cruise line, Celebrity, in their new E-Class ships, you can’t look forward to where the ship is going UNLESS YOU ARE IN A SUITE.

Our friends who still cruise Celebrity tell us that Viking is so much more expensive. But if I have to choose between a suite on a Celebrity ship in order to have access to the entire ship or our Penthouse verandah on Viking at just about the same price, I choose Viking. Besides treating me like I am in steerage unless I get a suite, Celebrity also gives me a “suite only” restaurant (where I can’t eat with my friends who are not in a suite) and they have all the things about cruise ships that Viking doesn’t (like kids, a casino, art auctions and more).

Viking gives every single person on the ship the exact same thing. Yes, if you get a Viking suite, you can purchase shore excursions and make dining reservations earlier than others. Still, once you are onboard, everyone is like everyone else except for the size of their stateroom. And that’s why we switched. So I could look forward as we sailed into someplace and not be treated like a second-class passenger.

Back to our sail-in. It was a gorgeous day weather-wise, and I had lots of photo opportunities. Here’s my first batch. Don’t worry; there are nowhere near as many photos today as yesterday in my post on Gearanger. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

When you first arrive, you think you are going under this bridge.

But the captain makes a turn.

Which takes you past some beautiful…

…suburbs with lots of homes.

Some colorful, waterfront condos.

And another big bridge.

This one we actually sailed under

And since I love to sail under a good bridge…

…I took a lot of photos.

…from every angle.

Even after we were underneath.

And of boats in the harbor.

I just remembered that I should mention that, like many Viking cruises, we were getting an overnight in Bergen before we disembarked on Friday. So today was a touring day. And we were booked on our usual, included “panoramic tour” of Bergen. We met our guide Nikolay on the pier, and we were off on our “luxury motor coach”. Even though Nikolay was from Germany and had only been in Bergen for a year, he did a very competent job. The first stop was downtown, where we could look back on the old port, then a visit to the basement of a church, which had been an old crypt but was now open to everyone for contemplation. Then, it was off to downtown, where we walked about six blocks through some old town area. All the way, Nikolay gave us a very informative talk.

Here are the photos with captions from our “Panoramic Bergen” excursion. Enjoy!

The old port in Bergen.

Beautiful views.

The top of the funicular we would ride on Friday.

Looking back at Viking Venus.

Nikolay telling us about the crypt before we went in.

Inside the crypt.

On a warm day, it would be a great place as it is very cool.

Norway’s great author Ibsen. Hope he didn’t really look like this.

Their oldest theater.

My 400mm lens strikes again. This is the statue way at the top of the previous building.

And more statues.

And a beautiful bandstand.

With flowers.

And more statues.

And the bandstand again.

Even their manhole covers are beautiful.

A huge man-made lake with this fountain was in the center of a park.

Beautiful landscaping and….

…swans!

After the tour, just like usual, Kathleen and I were back on the ship for lunch while Steve and Jamie did an E-Bike tour with Viking. They really enjoyed it, so if you have a chance to do it, they endorse it.

After lunch, Kathleen went back to the stateroom to start packing for disembarkation the following day, and I headed back into town for an unexpectedly warm walk in the sunshine. I took lots of photos, so here’s another gallery.

The old citadel at the old port.

The old port area. The shops are famous for their colors but give me Portree any day.

There were small alleys like this with shops all along the sides.

A very large monument in downtown Bergen.

I loved the look on this guy’s face.

Since it was a beautiful day, there were people out sunbathing on the artificial beaches.

A cool city street.

A panoramic view of a residential neighborhood.

My last photo before the incident.

And right after I took that last photo, it happened. My walk through beautiful Bergen took a bad turn when I was assaulted. It started with a young teen riding an electric scooter, passing me very closely while I was walking. He came so close I could feel him before I saw him out of the corner of my eye. I said Roy Kent’s favorite word. For those of you who have no idea who Roy Kent is, he is my favorite character on my favorite television show, Ted Lasso. His favorite word has four letters and starts with F. The kid (who was with another kid) turned and sneered at me, and then they went off down the road and turned a corner.

About five minutes later, I was still walking on the same residential street (looking for cool houses to photograph) when the same kid snuck up behind me again and passed me pretty quickly, but this time, he leaned toward me and pushed me out into the street. Luckily, no cars were coming, but I did take a pretty hard fall. Enough that my watch went off, asking me if I had fallen. Luckily for me, a very nice driver turned the corner just after the teens took off, and he stopped to check if I was OK. I debated calling the police but couldn’t identify the teens; there were no other witnesses, so why bother? Who knows what a pain that would have been to deal with?

I got up with a bruised knee and two bruised hands to go along with some road rash. I saved my camera—no damage, but I will be sore for a few days.

I was about two miles from the ship (on a total five-mile walk), so I got up, wiped off the blood and walked the rest of the way back to the ship. Got some ice on all of the bruises and bumps, left blood stains all over the stateroom (I felt bad about that) and limped around for the next day.

Of all the places I have walked around at crazy times taking pictures over the last 25 years, the last place I would have expected this to happen was Bergen, Norway.  I will be fine (everything except one thumb and the road rash feels a lot better two days later). And it could have been a whole lot worse. I could have broken my camera ?…or something else.

I didn’t want to spoil the cruise’s last night, so I made it up to the World Cafe for a final dinner (and a photo) with Steve, Jamie, Julie, Jamie and Kathleen. Not to mention the head waiter who managed to photo-bomb us. One of his staff members was taking the photo, so he couldn’t tell us what his boss was doing. But his boss was one of the nicest crew members we met all week, so we were OK with that.

Thanks to ice and Aleve, the next morning, I felt well enough to disembark (they wouldn’t give us a free cruise for something that happened in Bergen ?) so we grabbed an Uber and headed to our home for the night, the Moxy Hotel. It was a nice enough hotel, but when I booked it, the website said they were at the top of the port area. Well, Bergen has two (or maybe three) port areas. We wanted to be near where the ship docked in the interesting part of town. Instead we wound up a 2000 Kroner (for those who want to know, that’s about $20—transport is expensive in Bergen) Uber ride away from there (it was only 1.9 miles to walk from the ship to the hotel, but 6.4 miles to drive there due to one-way and pedestrian streets). Better planning next time. Bergen looks small on a map.

The hotel was very nice, but obviously, we were not their demographic. They are looking for 30-50-something tech professionals. Not 70+ retired people. But it was still OK. After we were off the ship (easiest disembarkation ever), at 9:00 a.m., we were at the hotel by 10:00. Of course, we didn’t expect our room to be ready. Check-in was at 3:00 p.m., but the nice person at the front desk said it should be ready by 1:00 or so. Since we knew this was going to happen, we had planned a couple of things to do in the meantime.

First up was the Bergen funicular. We decided to go there first because we had heard that by 10:30 a.m., it was a madhouse. We arrived just before 10:00 and made it up to the top in no time. We didn’t have to wait in line at all. We bought our tickets and jumped on. By the time we came back down around 11:00, the line was halfway down the street. If you go, go early! We took some great pictures while we were up there. Here’s the result.

The funicular car coming to get us.

At the top…you can see Viking Venus on the left.

A closer look.

An even closer look

Our hotel is about dead center.

And the fountain we saw the day before.

More of the city.

Everywhere in Norway there are trolls…ugly, scary trolls…WHY? This one was at the top of the funicular.

We don’t often take selfies but here we are at the top.

The entrance to the funicular when we got back down again. Lots of people waiting to get on.

And across the street…McDonalds…what else?

That about covers our day. We did a little shopping, dodged a terrific rainstorm by having lunch in a nice restaurant, and then returned to the hotel. By that time, we were both just wiped out. We didn’t even go out to dinner. I canceled our reservations, and we just went down to the hotel bar and had a drink and a flatbread. If you ever stay there, know that their flatbread is really flat…it’s a flour tortilla ?. That’s OK, after the last month of eating out everywhere we went, we didn’t need any more food. It was good to skip a meal.

This morning (Saturday, June 29), we headed to the airport early and caught our first flight from Bergen to Copenhagen. It went just fine, but when we got to Copenhagen, we ran into problems. We only had about 70 minutes to change planes for our flight to London, and we figured since we were on the same airline, we would be close. First, our flight was about 15 minutes late getting in, then when we left our arrival gate, the board above the door said it was a 12-minute walk to our gate. They didn’t mention Passport Control (why do you have to go through that just to pass through a country and never leave an airport???) or the fact that the woman directing traffic at Passport Control told us we couldn’t use the ones for our D gate but had to walk past our gate to the E gates and go through Passport Control there…and then come back to our D-Gate inside security. This was not a 12-minute walk. This was about a 25-minute walk.

As we walked towards the E-gate Passport Control, we walked by our gate D-103 and we talked to someone at the gate, but he told us he could not let us in there and that we had to go to Passport Control and return on the upper level. I told them I wasn’t sure Kathleen’s knee could make it that far and back before the flight left. He said he would order us a wheelchair, which would be there in 15 minutes, and that would get us cleared right through. We waited 20 minutes until we could see them boarding our flight at the gate right above us, and we decided to walk it. We finally found the E gates Passport Control, and another couple headed for our flight was there. They helped us get through, and the folks in line were nice enough to let us go to the front of the line. Once through there, we had to hike back to our gate. I went ahead and told Kathleen I would make that plane wait if I had to hijack it ?. Luckily, I didn’t have to go that far, but we were supposed to be in the first group to board, and I think we were about the last people on board. Maybe five got on after us. I chastised the gate agent who had promised us a wheelchair and told him he had almost made us miss the flight.

When we boarded our SAS flight, one of the attendants noticed Kathleen was wearing a knee brace and limping (pretty badly by then), and she immediately got ice for her knee. She was awesome. I mean REALLY AWESOME because while we were in the air, she radioed ahead to Heathrow and had a wheelchair waiting for us. The man who they sent to push the wheelchair was AWESOME as well. He not only got us through Passport Control at Heathrow in about three minutes (the lines looked to be about a 30-minute wait), he helped us with our bags and took us all the way to the Hilton Garden Inn at Terminal 2, where we are spending the night tonight before flying home to Seattle in the morning. That’s where I am sitting, finishing up this post. Part of the day was a bust, but it turned out OK in the end.

That about covers Bergen and the day after. My plan is to sum this all up (the cruise) while we fly home tomorrow. At least, that’s my plan now. It depends on how tired I am. But we don’t fly until noon, and we will be home by 2:45 p.m., so we shall see how much I can get done in two hours and 45 minutes ?. Stick with me; we are almost done. It’s hard to believe we left our house a month ago, on May 30th and will get home tomorrow, June 30th. Home sweet home.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.  —Winston Churchill