FRIDAY, JULY 1

Today we strolled around the small, charming town of Bergen. It's a university town, so there's a great young energy here. It's also probably the single most popular city for tourists in Norway because it's considered the gateway to the fjords. Tourists. Everywhere. After apparently about a month of beautiful weather, Bergen's trademark rain returned just in time to greet us. It's OK though, because the city's charm makes up for the dreary weather.

The key colorful sight: the wooden houses of the Brygge, the old port trading quarter.

Tourist Trap - I mean "Fish Market"

Fancy a reindeer or whale sausage?

Here we are enjoying breakfast in front of a randomly beautiful square.  Breakfasts in Norway so far have been courtesy of the convenience store chain Narvesen, which is about as ubiquitous as Starbucks, times about twenty.  We can get a cup of coffee and a croissant for breakfast for 25 Norwegian kroner ($3, which even by US standards is pretty solid).

Did we mention how many nice cars there are in Norway? Teslas everywhere. This country is stupid rich, from a combination of oil money and possibly glacier harvesting (?). But our favorite car, which we saw three times today, was this sweet matte brown Benz coupe. We even lucked into a glimpse of its real-life owner and his trophy wife/girlfriend/mistress, right after we snapped this picture!

After further wandering the many shopping streets of downtown Bergen, dinner was at a local non-touristy and excellent restaurant, Pingvinen, and another high-value recommendation from our Airbnb host, Inge. The plate on the left contains meatballs of an unknown meat (we are assuming reindeer) in gravy, carrots, potatoes, pea mash, and lingonberry jam. The bowl on the right is a ham and root vegetable goulash. The Norwegians, like North Carolinians, love their ham. Who knew? Anyway, eat all the things...

​After dinner chillin' in our ridiculous Airbnb flat; this loft area is actually separate from and upstairs from the living and bedroom area. It was around 11pm in this pic, btw. So much light makes for a happy Hirsh and Sarah. 😄