Morgan Family Travels - 16

Thankfully for my now-tired fingers this week was the least busy. We spent the entire week wandering around Bergen and enjoying ourselves! ;-)

Tuesday morning we went up the side of the mountain on the Floi Banen, which was good fun. The views were slightly less than what they could be because of cloud-cover, but it didn't rain while we were up there, so that's saying something. There was a playground at the top, which the girls enjoyed, and the seven-minute ride up in and of itself is good fun! That afternoon we took the bus out to the suburbs of Bergen where they have a small-scale version of West Edmonton mall - complete with small-scale waterpark, shopping centre, bowling alley, etc. We went swimming for a couple of hours and had fast-food for supper before returning home.

Wednesday morning I took the girls and we went to the Hanseatic Museum in Bryggen and Haakon's Hall at the end of Bryggen and looked at St. Mary's Church (the oldest building in Bergen). The Hanseatic Museum explains about the commerce that has taken place from the area of Bergen known as Bryggen. These are the beautiful old wooden buildings right down by the harbour, and from here commerce travelled all over Europe trading dried fish for various other goods such as grain, cloth, etc.

Haakon's Hall was built by the Norwegian King in the 12th century (I think ... my dates are getting confused at this point). At any rate, it was a king's hall - the residence being separate - and underneath the hall was offices for the civil servants of the day.

St. Mary's Church was built in the 11th or 12th century and has definite architectural similarities to Norman churches we have seen with the square towers.

Thursday afternoon Kaitlyn and Hannah and I went off to the Permanenten, a museum of decorative arts.

Much time over the course of the week was spent to browsing through shops - design shops, souvenir shops, clothing shops, music shops, toy shops - all to the great enjoyment of the entirety of the party.

Friday evening to celebrate we went out to dinner at the pizza restaurant that is in one of the buildings in Bryggen. It had beautiful ambience, and the food was terrific - except for a piece of glass I found in my salad as I bit down on it. The restaurant in turn gave us our entire meal for free, and as that was at CN Tower restuarant prices, we gladly accepted! From there we went over to the Pentecostal Church (the second oldest one in the city, I think) for a portion of their Friday night youth service. The service draws young people from 15 - 28-ish from all over the city, and there were about 250 there that night.

Saturday we left Bergen about mid-day, took the bus to Fresland where the airport is, and were home in time for supper with Edward and Davita, and Trevor's parents, who had kindly picked us up from the airport.