Tuesday morning was the start of our road trip. Kerwin, Dan, Ryan, and I took a cab to the car rental company to pick up our cars. Kerwin and Dan were helped first, and got the Golf Polo they had reserved. Ryan and I were helped next. The rental company was out of Polos, so got a free upgrade to an X3 instead. What a shame . We found our way back to the AirBnB with only a few wrong turns (signs in Bergen were slightly misleading). The Polo was too small to fit all of KLAD’s bags, so we put half of them in our X3.

We hit the road and drove about 15 min to Fantoft Stave Church. Stave is a style of architecture, after the English word ‘staff’, describing the columns that hold up the church. We visited a few of these types of churches in Norway. This particular church was a replica rebuilt after the original was burned in a fire.

After the church, we headed to Stavanger, our destination for the evening. The drive took us through 2 ferry crossings and a bunch of really long tunnels. The longest was around 8km. Many want down for the first half (at a 7 degree grade) and then back up for the second half. As I learned on the trip, Norway is known for their tunnel construction.

Once in Stavanger city proper, we got lost finding the AirBnB. This turned out to be a recurring theme throughout our driving experiences in Norway. We finally found it, moved the car 3 times because we couldn’t figure out from the street signs if we were legally parked, and unloaded our luggage. We headed across the street to the grocery store to pick up sandwich ingredients for the following day. Not obvious, was that there were actually two grocery stores across the street. We walked into the first one, split up and walked around. Something wasn’t right with this store, it looked familiar, but not quite ‘normal’. Turned out, we had walked into the Asian grocery store. No wonder we couldn’t find bread and deli meat! We headed next door to the typical grocery store, and purchased the necessary sandwich-making materials.

Loan found us a great restaurant for dinner called Matbaren. Of course, we got lost on the walk there.

Establishment we did not go to while in Stavanger

Back to the room for an early bed-time, cause the next morning was a very early start. Oh yeah, I should mention that, as is typical on vacation, Ryan was already sick. He caught a cold from Loan he thinks. At least we weren’t in a third world country, so no IV needed, just annoying sneezing, stuffiness, and congestion.

Also known as a train to a bus to a ferry to a train to a train. The ferry cruise through the fjords consisted of beautiful weather, nice views, tons of waterfalls, lots of colorful lupins. The scenery reminded us very much of New Zealand. Enjoy the pictures!

Here comes the first train

Views from the train.

Time to board the bus

View from the bus

The bus ride took us down a steep narrow mountain road with many switchbacks at 18% grade. It also went through Voss, the adventure capital of the Norway, where we caught a glimpse of someone parachuting.

Can you see the guy in the air?

How about now?

Adam and Loan waiting for the ferry

On to the ferry

Beautiful views from the ferry and enjoying the ride!  Lots of photos below courtesy of Loan’s camera.

Dan photobombs while Ryan is just wandering by

I get sleepy on the ferry

On to the Flamsbana!

Very odd stop at a waterfall where there was a performance with two woman singing/dancing on the rocks

Closer up picture of the woman at the falls

At some point during the performance, one performer ‘disappeared’ near the top of the falls, only to ‘reappear’ at the bottom of the falls.  I don’t remember who it was, but someone asked ‘How did she do that’?

The last train of the day.

Dinner was at a restaurant next to the fish market and was delicious! Ryan and I had seafood and fish soup. I followed it with salmon and scallop sashimi, both delicious. Ryan had wolffish, which looked really cool. Great meal all around!

Kerwin enjoyed the classic car gatherings in downtown Bergen.

Though we felt good when we arrived, it was pretty obvious we were a bit jet-lagged when everyone (even Kerwin) slept in late. Ryan and I woke up around 10:30am, made some breakfast in the room (after purchasing supplies at the 7-11 down the street the night before), and were ready just in time to make the noon walking tour. The walking tour was less walking than expected, but was still interesting. The guide took us through the Bryggen Museum, describing the many fires throughout the years that had burned down much of Bergen and viewing remnants from original buildings.

Similar to parts of New York, the parts of Bergen closest to the water are built on landfill. When a fire occurred, the rubble would be pushed into the water and new buildings would be built on top of that. She then walked us through the Schotstuene (old assembly hall) ending at the Hanseatic Museum.

Dried cod, at one time the principal export of Bergen — Looks delicious!

After the ‘walking’ tour, we did some more walking; to the train station to pick up tickets for the following day, past the lake, some art museums, around Johanneskirken.

Longhorn found in Bergen

Yoga in the middle of the square

I become part of the art

There was a slack line setup near the lake.  This is about as far as we all got before falling off.  Pictures courtesy of Loan.

View from Johanneskirken

Bryggen Quay from across the water. The 11 houses on the right are original and are all slightly tilted from settling.

Kirken means church in Norwegian, and we visited a few of them in Norway. We don’t quite understand why, but all the churches in Bergen were closed on Sunday afternoon.
Mariakirken, a big church in the center of town, had been closed down for renovations and had a special opening this evening for an organ recital. It was a new organ that had just been installed, and the builders of the organ were in attendance. There were a few presentations before the recital (all in Norwegian, best guess was thanking the people who donated $, thanking the people who built the organ, etc). The organ sounded great. But there isn’t really much to watch during an organ recital, since the organist plays from the 2nd floor back of the church. I’m pretty sure all of us fell asleep at some point during the recital.