Scandinavia- 15th Oct (Sat)

Scandinavia- 15th Oct (Sun)
Our flight for Norway today was at 10:40am. We head for Oslo and then Bergen, reaching Bergen at around 1pm. We checked out of the hotel with no fuss and walked to the central station for the airport express. We managed to board a waiting train to terminal 5.

The only hassle we had I guess was having to pick up our luggage at Oslo and checking it again for the flight to Bergen. It didn't leave us a lot of time to get to the gate, luckily, the flight was delayed by 30 minutes and we managed to book the Bergen hotel through a phone call and buy some chocolate snacks (Smash – chocolate layered chips that comes in a yellow bag, Freia - “Quick lunch” like kit-kat except that it’s made from real chocolate, Nidar – “Stratos” like aero bar, comes in a blue bag) that Tor had recommended. Ross had a great sense of achievement knocking off 3 items on his list on Tor's to-try list in Norway.

Reaching Bergen, we took the airport bus near our hotel. It was a 10 minutes walk to the hotel, a big portion of it and especially the last part was steep upslope. We managed to get to the hotel with our backpacks on our backs, panting and gasping for air.

We stayed in Steens Hotel (we are guessing Steens is Norwegian for Swans). It was a nice restored Manor house. The room and toilet isn't too big but nice and clean.

We headed out to explore the coastal touristy area, Brygens. When we were 10 minutes from the hotel, we realised that we had forgotten the camera and poor Ross climbed the slope again back to the hotel, while I decided it was time for lunch at a nearby Vietnamese restaurant. It was a small restaurant and ran by Vietnamese. The beef noodle soup turned out to be very good. When Ross joined me later, he had a bowl too. By the time we finished our meal, it was 4pm.

We proceeded for a long walk in Brygens. It was a very nice area and would have looked better with bright sunlight. But the day was slightly cloudy. It was also not as cold as we thought. It wasn't as breezy as Stockholm. It is a sort of nice quiet touristy town. The autumn colors were beautiful and Bergen seemed a very foresty sloppy place with wooden houses on faraway slopes.

There were also lots of students in the area we stayed. We headed back after our walk and did some administrative stuff, using the fast free internet service in the hotel.

I was actually quite tired throughout the day due to the early morning. Slept a bit while we were back in the room in the evening and had a take-away pizza for dinner back in the hotel room.