Viking Cruise from Bergen to the British Isles

August 16, 2024    

We flew in from Seattle yesterday - a long day indeed.  The flight left at 6PM on August 14 on Delta to Amsterdam, 9.5 hours.  Luckily we were on a wide body with 2 seats by the window.  The food was remarkably good.  I had a chicken curry and Dean had manicotti.  They even had Bombay gin to drink - unlike the bar at the airport which only had Tanguerey.  The airport in Amsterdam is HUGE.  We had to walk over a mile to our departure gate.  There was not enough seating and the air conditioner wasn't working well.  We got on a small plane for a 1.5 hour flight to Bergen.  When we arrived here, it was raining and cool.  Looks and feels like home.  There are huge block letters on a cliff outside the airport that read BERGEN?  Apparently it was some sort of art installation. After a half hour bus ride through some of the longest tunnels ever, we arrived at the ship.  It is big and beautiful.  It doesn't seem very crowded.  We opted for the casual dining restaurant last night and it was amazing.  I had sushi and some of the best bouillabaisse ever.  There are 9 flavors of gelato and a huge dessert bar.   Got settled into our stateroom which is spacious as far as boats go.  

This morning we went on a bus tour of Bergen.  This is the second largest city in Norway, about 400K people.  No homeless that I could tell.  The town is clean and beautiful.  The weather, not so much.  It's even cooler and rainier than Port Angeles. It has the most rain of any European city, over 280 days worth.  There are some quaint old buildings as well as some impressive stone forts and churches.  Apparently there have been a lot of fires over the centuries.  Now the leading cause of fires are university students who buy cheap pizza, put it in the oven to heat and pass out dead drunk. Looking forward to dinner tonight - a taste of Norway. Hope it is not Lutefisk.  

I can't figure out how to transfer photos from my phone to the lap top, so they will have to wait.  I have been trying to do work from here, but the Internet connection is painfully slow and it randomly kicked me off.  Took over 1/2 hour to order an antibiotic for a patient with a bladder infection.  Ugh.