Rainy Bergen and Beautiful Olden, Norway
Since I started posting about my first cruise holiday recently, I figured I might as well continue with the other locations to see how much I can remember of it. Let me go back to the first two ports from my holiday, Rainy Bergen and Beautiful Olden.
今次帶大家到我北歐郵輪前兩個站，挪威的卑爾根和Olden。
RAINY BERGEN
After setting off from England two days ago, I arrived ay my first port of call, Bergen. It's the first place I set foot on in Norway. Bergen is the second largest city in Norway, and every year there are over 300 cruise ships that stop by here! Rain was here to welcome me.
抵達卑爾根當天正在下雨，我們坐登山纜車到山頂看市內風景。可惜天氣太差，在朦朧之中只能依稀見到市面景色，和遙望我們的郵輪。 布呂根是比爾根市內必去的景點，現在已列為世界文化遺產。 比爾根每年有多達三百首郵輪到訪， 我相信平時這裏我一定人山人海。當天下雨遊客不多，看來也未嘗不好。
As soon as I embarked from the cruise ship, I saw a fish market by the port. Being a seafood lover, I headed over immediately, or rather I couldn't miss it as it was literally right in front of my face. There were only a couple of rows of stalls here, it wasn't a big market, and with the rain, it seemed a bit deserted. I later found out the other reason it was a bit deserted was because the locals don't come here. The reason? Well, being by the cruise port is a massive giveway. It's a tourist trap!!!! Yup!!! Anyway, it was still a nice welcoming sight to see my favourite food.
A short walk from the Fish Market is the Fløibanen funicular. It's one of Norway's most popular attraction. Me and my family headed over to catch the funicular railway up the 300m high Floyen mountain as it offers a great view of Bergen city. Sadly this is our view of rainy Bergen city from the top of the mountain, complete with our cruise ship.
BRYGGEN
With not much to do or see, we headed back down to the city very soon. Cruise holiday or not, if you're in Bergen for the first time, I think you have to visit Bryggen.
I don't know what it is about Norway and fires. If you read my last post about Alesund, you may recall that the town was rebuilt in 1904 due to a major fire. Well, in 1702 there was a big fire that burnt down a big part of Bergen as well. The buildings around this area were rebuilt, and since 1979 this area has been listed as a UNESCO Heritage site. I think in way, the rain was good as there was hardly anyone around, and creates a different feel to the photos.
I wandered behind the row of houses at Bryggen, walking through the narrow alleyways in between, and said hello to this massive wooden cod.
Beautiful Olden
As the cruise liner ventured up north towards the famous fjords, the scenery became more spectacular. Our next stop was Olden another popular tourist attractions that receives many cruise ships each year. Olden is a small village, and a population of 498 on 2013 ( I went in 2012) and by 2017 it had grown to 505.
郵輪繼續往北行，越來越 接近美麗風景和壯觀的冰川。 我與家人預定遊覽車帶我們去觀看冰川。當時七月份，冰川從山上堆積到湖泊岸，第一次親眼目睹這個自然奇景實在太壯觀噢！ 離開冰川不遠有另一個較大的湖，在哪裏可以遠看冰川及雪山上的風景。而翠綠的湖面就在我的腳邊。 在我身後還有一間應該只在童話故事裏出現的小屋。
With 16 of us in my party, we had pre arranged a minibus to take us around. This gave us a bit more flexibility compared to those who went on the excursions arranged by the cruise liner. Briksdalsbreen glacier is about half an hour away from Olden village and located inside the Jostedalsbreen National Park. From the drop off point, we could have taken a troll car ride, but it was a lovely day, too nice not to go for a walk.
There were a few mild steep climb as we had to ascend a bit further up towards the glacier, and I remember walking across this bridge in front of one of the many waterfalls here.
This was the first time I had seen a glacier, and it was really something quite spectacular. The glacier stops in front of a small lake so I could get pretty near to it. Look at the ice behind me! And this was in July.
AFTER THE GLACIER
After the glacier we stopped by the Oldevatnet lake on the way back. There was a beautiful spot called Yrineset which is only about 7km from the glacier. From here we could look back and get a full view of the glacier.
It is at this spot that I took one on my favourite photos. I actually uploaded onto Pixabay a few years ago, and I just checked, its been downloaded 55 times. A travel company in New Zealand has even used it one of their tour packages! I wonder if I should take it off Pixabay now? Photographers, what do you think?
By now we were near towards the end of our Olden day out. Just one more stop to the village for a walk around. Actually I felt a bit guilty intruding into their peace and quiet. It was so beautiful here, and we weren't being rowdy or anything so I'm sure we can be forgiven. Who can resist such a beautiful place?
Rainy Bergen and Beautiful Olden
And this concludes the first two day of my trip to rainy Bergen and Beautiful Olden in Norway. Time to return to our cruise ship which was waiting for us at the port, towering over the village. I wish I could have seen more, but that's just life. Another time, hopefully.
匆匆走訪挪威兩個景點， 可惜未能在這裏多停留一下。希望再機會再回來。
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The waterfall and the glacier look fabulous. Even in a rainy day that city looked beautiful! Thanks for sharing your travels!
Thanks for dropping by @lymepoet
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Some people come to Oslo to "see Norway", I usually tell people that they haven't really seen Norway if they have only seen Oslo. Although some Norwegians (and probably Bergen-people as well) considers that Bergen ought to be considered a separate nation from the rest of Norway, I think Bergen is more representative for "the real Norway" than Oslo ... but the rest of the west coast is even better.
An anecdote ... one friend of mine from school went to an insulated island at the very end of Sognefjorden. It was quite amazing, particularly with the public transport - first a big fast ferry from Bergen, it stopped mid-fjord so we could jump over to a smaller ferry, the smaller ferry finally came to the island, and there the bus was waiting for us, super-efficiently. Going back was less efficient, the smaller transport of course always had to wait for the bigger transport. I'd say that trust is a concept that's very strong in Norway. In this village on this island, people left the car key in the car and the house doors open. I did have some problems paying my ticket on the ferry, and it was no problem - I could pay the ferry ticket on arrival.
Language is another thing - we have many dialects in Norway. Apparently, the more weird and isolated dialects are slowly vanishing. I met with three generations on the island, it was the grandparents, the young parents and the young children. I couldn't understand a world of that the gransparents were saying! Their "Norwegian" was so far away from mine that it sounded mostly like gibberish to me. The parents, I could understand them clearly but their dialect was quite strange, like something I hadn't heard before. The children - they talked like they do in Bergen.
That's similar to UK, many people think they've seen UK because they've been to London but there is a lot more outside of London as well. Though I think, the balance between London vs the rest of the UK, and Oslo vs the rest of Norway is quite different as things are quite heavily focused in London. Whereas from my limited undestanding, Norway seems to be very famous for its fjords and the rest of the country which seems so beautiful.
I would love to go back to Norway again, as I think I have hardly scratched the surface during my flash trip to each location.
Stunning! Beautiful... I am speechless in awe. What a wonderful world! Thank you so much @livinguktaiwan its indeed awesome:)
Thanks Sheryl. From what I managed to see, Norway does seem like a beautiful country in deed.
It's unfortunate that weather wasn't so good. Which cruise did you go on? Did you go up further to Tromso to see the northern lights?
I went on one of the Princess ones, can't remember which one it was, but it was quite large.
On this trip we didn't go to Tromso, but I did to go to Finland a few years afterwards to see the northern lights. Stayed in a resort in the middle of nowhere for a week and saw the northern lights for 4 out of 6 nights I think. It still ranks as 1 of my 3 memorable trips ever.
Tromsø is advertised as the polar light destination, but that's a half-truth. Tromsø is nice for the tour operators because of the weather patterns there are almost always somewhere within two hours drive where it's no clouds on the sky. In Tromsø itself it's quite often cloudy, and the polar lights aren't always there - they can typically last for some 10-30 minutes only.
I was living in Tromsø in a quite nice spot - we had very few neighbours and hence not so much light pollution there, and we didn't have an indoor toilet - meaning that we would go out every so often, of course looking for the polar light while being outdoor. That's another thing, if staying indoors in a lit room, you can't just see the polar light out the windows, it's really needed to go out to see it.
I typically used to tell people coming for a visit (through http://www.bewelcome.org nowadays - I was doing hospitality through own webpages, hitch hikers homebase and hospitality club since 1998) that they have 50% probability of seeing it if staying at my place for a week during the right time of the year.
Also, being in the winter time in Tromsø as a tourist, typically downtown ... one would probably tend to spend quite much of the time indoors or in lit city streets, chances are that there actually was some polar light right out there, but you missed it. Hence, staying downtown in a hotel, I'd say the probability is smaller than 50% for seeing it, I'd say - unless one signs up for a polar light expedition, those operators have both solar activity forecast data and regular weather forecast data available and know quite well when to see it and where to see it.
Right, next time I'm going to see the northern lights, I'm definitely going to contact you! Last time I was so mesmerised with what I saw, that I didn't realise I stood for a whole hour in minus 30 degrees.
In -30C one needs to keep in activity and have pretty good clothes or one will be frozen to the bone in one hour.
I remember once it was delays in the train traffic and I stood waiting for an hour in -14, I got very frozen.
Another time in Russia, I was waiting for a pickup in -20C, it was pretty bad as there were some misunderstandings and I needed to text on the phone and check maps with my bare hands for quite some time.
Once in -20C I went to pick up some skates from the car, and up the stairs to the sixth floor. I grabbed the skates by the iron, didn't think much of it, but that was a terrible idea. I got blue marks that lasted for days, it was quite painful.
My wife tried hitchhiking from Murmansk to Tromsø in -50C, that was also a horrible idea. She eventually went by airplane from Kirkenes to Tromsø and was still freezing when she arrived in Tromsø.
The cold is not only about temperature, humidity and wind is important. I once went from -30C in St.Petersburg to -18 in Helsinki, it was much colder in Helsinki!
In Tromsø it's usually just below 0C in the winter time, very rarely less than -14C, though much humidity.
When we were in Tromso we joined a tour that take us outside the city and waited for a whole night for polar lights. We saw them in the end so that was cool., but I remember seeing the thermometer saying it was -25 degrees C. We did have a lot of jackets on, was moving around and had a fire. We also went on the postal cruise (can't remember the name) that took us right to the border of Norway and Russia. We saw Northern lights every night on the cruise.
Hurtigruten, goes from Bergen to Kirkenes, used to be very important part of communications in the North of Norway, now the ships are much bigger, but mostly optimised towards tourists.
While I wrote that Tromsø is not so cold in the winter time, one doesn't have to go far to find very low temperatures. We're living in Oslo now, ten degrees further south. Winters are comparable, but much shorter, and summers are warmer and longer.
Yes, Hurtigruten, that's the one. And yes, I think Tromso is suppose to be one of the warmest place you can see the northern lights, because the warm Atlantic current is keeping it warmer than most cities of the same latitude. But as soon as you go inland you start to get cold real quickly.
When did you go? They say there's a peak in activity avery 11 years, and I went in 2014, hopefully can go back again in 2025
I went in 2010 so quite a while back. Would love to go again. Would love to see Norway in summer too!
The resort we stayed at made sure we were well wrapped up so luckily we didn't feel the cold at all. In fact it took me more than 5 minutes to put on all my gear each time, and after that I couldn't wait to rush outside because I was sweating already.
哇! 那個瀑布拍起來好壯觀好漂亮喔
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經過時瀑布的水會打過來，很清涼。
想像得到😃
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Sad to see you had the same weather as I had while I was in Bergen for work. Really loved the place. But I did see and taste the fish in the local restaurants there in the wooden houses in Bryggen. Thinking back of wandering through those small streets makes me smile. You had more luck with the glacier than I had, I visited it on a foggy day.
The photos I see from other people of Norway always have fantastic weather, just goes to shoe don't always believe what you see on the internet!!
Hehe for sure Norway isn't every day sunshine and blue skies! 🤣
But even when it rains the country is beautiful to explore