Norway or No Way

We flew from Copenhagen to the city of Bergen on Norway's west coast. Bergen gets about 270 days of rain a year so we were extremely lucky to see the city on two perfectly sunny days. We were at about the same altitude as Helsinki, so the sun was going down at about 2 am and rising again about 5 am.

The main harbor. Yet another example of cute colored houses lined up in a row and the tourists who love them.

We took a pretty cool tour of the Bergen museum and learned some interesting facts about the city. The harbor front used to be about 50 meters back but over time, in order to accommodate larger boats, wooden stilts were put into the ground and the city gradually moved forward. Archaeologists are finding some pretty interesting remnants of this turn of the century inhabitants.

The lake in central Bergen with an awesome modern sculpture. After exploring the city and laying in the the grass enjoying the sunshine for a while, Alex and I took a cable car up to the point on the hill just above that fountain in the background.

And this is the view. We watched this paraglider while we enjoyed our cappuccinos and then headed out for our easy 5 km hike around the top of the hill...or so we thought...

Beautiful scenery up here. If you look hard you can see a tiny little red cabin on the horizon. Don't know who's it is but I'm jealous. I could live there for a few months and tend this flock.

And this begins our 2 hour adventure into the Norwegian forest. We thought we were looping around to the cable car but instead heading down this valley and into another valley and around a lake and all the way back into Bergen. I ate it once because the trails were super slippery and muddy. Then I was telling Alex how I had just face-planted and almost slid down the hill, and I did it again. Nice. It was fun. We thought we were lost a few times. Sort of gets your adrenalin up and its so fun being out there alone in the woods. Its good it gets dark at about 2 am because I just kept thinking, at least we won't get stuck out here in the dark! We walked back into our hotel covered in mud and sat at the bar, that just happened to be one of the best whisky bars in all of Europe, and had a drink. An awesome day.