Tapp's Travels

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We woke to find ourselves in Bergen, the second largest city in Norway.  Our walking tour took us to Bryggen.  This neighbourhood features colourful wooden houses on the old wharf, once a centre of the Hanseatic League’s trading empire.  The area was built on wooden foundations which have disintegrated and the houses were all collapsing until a restoration programme was started to underpin the buildings and to bring them back to (more or less) vertical!  The work is continuing.

The city has had it’s share of disasters with great fires destroying 80% of the buildings on at least one occasion.  The population was also devastated by the Black Death which we were told was “imported” on ships from the UK.

Clearly, Bergen is now a vibrant city with huge interests in servicing the offshore oil and gas fields as well as having active fishing and tourism industries.

On our way to the ice bar, we met the previous Prime Minister of Norway, Erna Solberg.  Well, more of a Banksiesque portrait of her and her broken scooter!.

Having held two separate terms in office, she was “deposed” in 2021 by the current incumbent.

We passed a number of odd structures …

First thoughts were that they were hi-tech chargers for Norway’s burgeoning electric car fleet.  But no.  They are rubbish bins!  You enter a code number (chip and PIN related to your address).  Then the flap opens and you put your rubbish in.   There is a PAYT (Pay-As-You-Throw) system in place to help finance the project.  Underground pipes whisk the trash away at 70 kph under vacuum to one of two processing plants on the outskirts of the city!  Neat!  And all for the affordable sum of 1.25 billion NOK!  Affordable for Norway – said to be the second wealthiest country on the planet (allegedly,  based on GDP per capita).

Our official tour of town ended at Magic Ice, the ice bar where we got dressed for the Arctic.  Here’s Glenda with Brendan and Melanie …

… and we had cool cocktails amongst a collection of ice carvings …

… including some rather risqué ones …

Afterwards, we decided to take the Fløibanen Funicular up to Fløyen, 420 m above sea level.  From here there are panoramic views of the city.

Silver Moon, our ship, can be seen near the right hand edge of the photo.  There were lots of woodland trails and a small lake within easy walking.

Our ship relocated overnight and Kumar delivered our morning tea to us in Alesund …

…but that’s another story!