It is very difficult not to like Bergen.  It’s neither too big, nor too small; neither too quiet, nor too noisy.  Like all the Scandinavian cities we’ve visited, it is very easy to navigate on foot.  It is exotic and foreign, but everyone switches to English quite cheerfully.  There is deep history and rich culture.  And most of us had not idea it existed until yesterday.

Even Jen, who did know it existed because she planned our stop here, did not quite fathom what a gem it would turn out to be.

Excited about having a whole day to explore some more, we fueled up at our hotel’s breakfast buffet.  A quick little background:  We are staying in the apartment section of the Magic Hotel in the Kloverheuset building.   There are a few other members of the Magic Hotel empire here in Bergen, and the hotel and its staff will factor pretty heavily in our enjoyment of the day, so we should slide a little publicity their way.

When we confirmed in the morning that, as apartment renters and not hotel room guests, we would have to pay for the breakfast buffet, the woman at the desk noted that the Magic Hotel on the other side of the waterfront also had a breakfast buffet. She said it was virtually the same buffet, but it was a bunch of kroner cheaper for some reason .

That’s pretty helpful information to know, we thought; and we headed over to the other Magic Hotel for breakfast.  Then we shopped a bit along the Bryggen, which is the old section of the waterfront.

Soon enough, it was time for checkout (a noon checkout is another nice feature of this particular hotel chain), and the staff was all too happy to let us store our things in the locked luggage room.  Moreover, they were kind enough to allow us back into the apartment building because last night we forgot to take advantage of another major benefit — a free laundry room.

Multiple times during the day we would return to the desk and the attendant would give us a key to let us back into the apartment building to check our laundry.   It dried more slowly than we would have liked, perhaps because the washing machine seemed to have a rather unproductive spin cycle.  Also, we found out that dryers in this part of the world collect extracted water in a special tank which needs to be emptied out like a dehumidifier.  Super interesting stuff.

Because of this, we had to bum around town, spending an hour or so here, then return to the hotel to check the dryer.  It took a little while for it to all work out, but, as stated before, it was free laundry access.  We thank you, Magic Hotel chain of Bergen.

We were not suffering in the meantime, by the way.  No one will complain about wating for laundry if they are passing the time eating ice cream waffle creations.

Eventually, though, the laundry felt dry.  We got the luggage room key and stored the clean clothes with the rest of our stuff, and we were free for the big-ticket item of the day.

We climbed just a smidge up into the hills from the waterfront and boarded the Floibanen, a funicular railway that takes people up Mount Floyen to a little resort area of playgrounds, hiking trails, and fantastic views.

Bergen is a touristy place in many ways, but the Floibanen does not seem to be a tourist-only activity.   We met a local couple in the terminal who advised us that the best views would be from the lowest car, and then they gave us their spaces in that car because they’ve be on it so many times.

This is really a nice place.

The top of Mount Floyen proved quite pleasurable, except that we arrive just a few minutes late for the free canoing on lake Skomakerdiket, but that had more to do with Norwegian laundry appliances than it did with the funicular or Mount Floyen.

 

 

 

The views of the city made up for any disappointment over canoes, and we ended up having plenty of time to walk several trails and then hike back down to the waterfront.  The fairly steep three kilometers down made us appreciate the help we got getting up the mountain.  `

Now quite hungry, we enjoyed a Chinese-food dinner.

Then, in a final stop in at the Magic Hotel, we grabbed our luggage and headed over to the station to catch the night train to Oslo.  We already had tickets reserved, but Jen managed to purchase us a sleeping cabin, which we quickly settled into.  We slept through most of what would be our last major train ride of the trip, and then faced the task of trying to make friends with Oslo after so recently leaving in a huff.