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Friday 27^th September.

Time flies! Been busy here. We went to Copenhagen Central railway station on Tuesday to get rid of our travel cards. They are a big joke and I wouldn’t recommend them to tourists. They cost 80DKK and it turns out, that’s not refundable when you cash them in. And when you use them, you can’t tag in with less than 70DKK credit. Central is the only place to talk to a person, so we went to the station to get the credit we had on the card back and were hoping to either keep the card and leave them with Linda or have a keepsake. Turns out, we got neither! WE didn’t understand what the staff told us. After a discussion about getting our credit and keeping the cards to use at another time, they then said the cards were ‘closed’ and couldn’t be used again and we couldn’t have them back. It’s apparently a fairly new system and there are many problems with it and many complaints, just from the locals.

On Wednesday, we were going to have a day checking out Fredericksberg because we had spent most of our time so far in the city, 2 metro stops away. There’s a glass art gallery housed in the old water reservoirs that used to supply fresh water to the area, sounded interesting so we went up to have a look – closed Mon, Tues, and Wed. Of course! Maybe come back tomorrow…….. We had seen a 2^nd hand/antique shop in the main street that had a bottle opener in the window that Trevor liked the look of so we went and bought that and had a fun chat with the guy that runs the shop. He’s Greek, lived in Copenhagen for 24 years and used to be in the merchant navy and had visited Australia but couldn’t remember where. We eventually decided it must have been around Port Kembla because he said it was about an hour away from Sydney and they loaded steel. A friend of Linda’s was home alone, husband Richard was away on business, so Linda invited her over for dinner. They’re a ‘Swire’ couple and are soon moving to Fremantle, so hopefully they’ll keep in touch. Bought a couple of winter weight long sleeve t-shirts, they’ll come in handy no doubt.  I think I’m getting a cold.

Thursday was pretty quiet because I felt pretty rotten. Went to the shops and bought some vapour drops and Trevor and Linda found me some cold & flu pills. Codiene is not allowed here without prescription, so I’ll have to make do with paracetamol and antihistamines. After lunch we trek back through the Fredericksborg Have to the Cisternernes, the glass art gallery. It cost 50DKK to go in and it was worth it just to see the building. The things you find underground! It was massive, with lots of supporting uprights, all brickwork, arched ceilings and some interesting artwork. In the back section are lots of old statues, taken from the Fredericksberg Slot (Palace) gardens where they were slowly decaying. This is the perfect place to keep them preserved. I wonder what happens after closing …. Do they all come to life? It’d be an interesting party with dancers and musicians.

Laura mentioned a place near Norreport station that’s a food market, well worth a look. Linda had mentioned it, but Laura said the magic words ‘gourmet food market’. I still feel rotten, but push on to make the most of our time. It was well worth seeing and I can imagine in summer it would be buzzing, especially in the outdoor eating area. We took some goodies home for dinner, nice and easy. We’re leave for Norway today,  so spent a bit of time last night packing and organising.

Getting to the airport here is a breeze, and the price of a normal rail ticket. Sydney, please take note. SAS Airlines send out a text message the day before when on-line check in is available or you can just reply ‘yes’ and they will check you in, you just don’t get to pick your seats, but for an hour flight, who cares? So that’s done, all we need to do is print off boarding passes and luggage tags when we arrive at the airport. Linda comes with us to squeeze the most out of our time. Waiting in the bag drop line, a nice staff member opens a space in the chute and lets us through. Finally! Someone knows who we are and we get the treatment we’ve been waiting for! We watch the numbers on the bag weigh in and by our calculations we are about 38kg between us. 30kg he says – that is good, have a pleasant flight. Not being ones to argue, we take our docs and leave our bags – see you in Bergen bags! There’s s’possed to be one hour of free wi-fi here in the airport, but we’re getting close to boarding so it’s not worth bothering with. I’ll find some in Bergen, hopefully!

The weather here has been so nice, lots of sunshine, but we’ve noticed it turning cooler just while we’ve been here. When the breeze picks up you really notice it. It’s not yet as cold as our winters, but it’s going to get a lot colder. I see why bears hibernate. They’ve got the right idea!

Everyone here speaks good English, but it’s annoying when you speak in English and the reply comes in Danish, followed by the same reply in English. Only one person did that to me, but you’ve gotta wonder.

Other nice things we’ve noticed about Copenhagen

 – the bells. There are several bell towers in earshot of Linda’s, some playing fairly standard beats, but there’s one, not sure if it was the local Town Hall or something like that, Linda will have to remind me, but every now and then it plays a tune after the toll, it’s a tune I recognised but can’t think of the name. Anyway, it was very pretty, and didn’t disturb us at night.

-the pushbikes. It’s a very pushbike oriented city, the fact that it’s not very hilly helps. And also the extreme tax levied on motor vehicles. Although sometimes, they’re like bees buzzing around. You have to watch out for cars, other pedestrians, prams, and pushbikes!

Picking the story up back at the airport ….. check in – apparently a staff member must have recognised us because they opened another bag drop counter and ushered us to it! That’s better! Now if only someone else had passed the word along and our plane hadn’t been forgotten by the powers that be at the airport. Our plane arrived in plenty of time, but no ground crew came to board us. A couple of crew from the plane came out to the gate and looked around and about 20 minutes after boarding was meant to commence, ground crew came screaming to the gate and processed everyone very quickly. Luckily there weren’t too many people booked on the flight so we were only about 20 minutes late getting away.

The views from the sky were amazing. We don’t have mountains in Australia. They have mountains here. We saw lots of snow away in the distance but there’s nothing on the ground here. It’s actually warmer here today than it looked like being in Copenhagen. Go figure. Considering Bergen is renowned for rain, we have landed on a brilliant day. Caught the Flybussen from the airport into Bergen (Bear-gn), and got dropped at the door of our hotel, the Scandic Strand. Talk about service, and the lady who sold us the bus tickets insisted on helping us with our bags to the bus. Copenhagen must have phoned ahead! Checked in no problems, unpacked a few things, including our Norwegian Kroner, and off we went to explore. Seeing the weather was so beautiful, the Floibanen Funicular up to the top of Mount Floyen for the absolute best view of Bergen was top of the list. It reminded me of how fortunate we were when we went up to Victoria Peak in Hong Kong, it was so clear.

How many layers Trevor?

643m to the top.

I had tossed up earlier about walking one way, probably down, but, still not feeling 100%, we coughed up for a return ticket and it was worth every penny, sorry, kroner! About $16 each return. You’ll have to come back for photos, the internet doesn’t reach up to our room from the lobby, the cord isn’t long enough, so I’ll put photos in later. No, it's ok, they found a longer cord! Our hotel room overlooks what seems to be the focus of tourism in town, the area around Bryggen and the Torget Fish Market.

Patrick! King crab in a tin!

Bryggen is a UNESCO World Heritage site, the place where the first buildings in Bergen were built and we explored that area when we came down from the mountain. We didn’t know how old the area was but found out that there have been buildings on the site since around 1070AD when Bergen was founded by King Olav Kyrre. There have been many fires, the worst in 1702 when the whole town burned down. Even the footpaths in the alleys are timber boards. No wonder smoking is forbidden there now!

Torn now about what to do next. It’s been very thirsty work to this point but we really want to go for a walk and see where the boat leaves from tomorrow and also see Knosesmauet, apparently one of the most photographed laneways in Bergen. Head overrules heart (thirst) while the weather is still being kind, so map in hand, it’s off to Knosemauet. From the bottom of the lane we can see across to the Hurtigruten terminal, it’s not far and would be an easy walk without suitcases, and there’s a decent bit of a hill between here and there, and the paths are paved with cobblestones, so maybe a cab will be needed tomorrow. And I’m not feeling that flash. Did I say that already? Yes? Tough, I’m saying it again. Knosemauet was worth finding, it’s very pretty, with lots of colourful houses and pots of bright flowers everywhere. Don’t suppose they’ll last the winter that’s coming. I daresay there are many such lanes in town down in that area particularly, but time wasn’t on our side to explore any further.

Prettier in person.

On our mission, we passed a couple of pubs, notably Scruffy Murphy’s (does every town have one of those?) and ended up at Finnegan’s where we must have got the cheapest beers in town, and that’s saying something here in Norway. I knew it was going to be expensive, but the reality of it is something else. Glad we’ve got full board on the boat.