This will be a more ‘micro’ look at Bergen. I often look for the small details when I’m walking around a town. I found many interesting things in Bergen and I’ll show you a few.

We walked through several neighborhoods in Bergen. Most of them are up the side of the mountains. I don’t know the age of the roads and houses but I’m guessing back to the 1800’s at least. On the steeper streets, I thought the streets clearly showed that they go back to at least the horse and buggy days. If you look at the street where Vicky is walking, you can see that the center of the street is paved differently from the sides. The center was made to give a horse traction as it went up and down the hill while the sides were smooth to give the buggy a smooth ride. Several of the streets that we walked down were so steep that I was walking down the center to give myself some traction.

The “Statsraad Lehmkuhl” is a navy training sailing ship. It is Norway’s largest and oldest square-rigged sailing ship. It was docked a block or so from our hotel. Our local guide told us that new Norwegian navy recruits sail this ship as a training exercise, under only sail power, to the United States and back. That sounds like a good training exercise. I understand that this ship is also available for charter for day trips, conferences, or social gatherings. We saw it out in the bay earlier this day.

In the pedestrian walking street or mall in central Bergen, I saw the water feature in the third photo. At first I thought that it was just some sort of creative water feature. But as we poked around in this area, I saw kids having races in the water using different floatable items for each kids “boat”. So while the whole run of the water feature is quite long, it doesn’t go that far as it doubles back on itself. Parents watching their kids didn’t have to “follow” the river to keep up with their kids; they just sat in place and the kids stayed close by. I thought this was clever from multiple standpoints. No one was racing when I took this photo but you can see how it would work.

I took the fourth photo in the Fish Market. This market runs right along the harbor. There are lots of booths set up and spaced around restaurants and bars and stores. It was a lively and exciting place. They had all sorts of delicacies from the sea. In this photo, I show some whale. Norway is one of only three countries that still hunt whales commercially, along with Japan and Canada. Norwegians have been hunting whales for centuries and still do today but in a much more limited amount. Our guides told us that this is a very controversial issue in Norway. For that reason, whale hunting has greatly diminished from many years ago. Most uses for whales are no longer needed. Today, I believe that whales are mostly used for meat. At one dinner, we had ‘filet of whale’. I would say that it was very good and if I hadn’t known that it was whale, I would have thought that I was eating beef.

The main street along the harbor and right next to our hotel was apparently one of the oldest sections of Bergen. Why do I think this? Many of the buildings, on closer inspection, had the tendencies that you see in the last photo. I’m still not sure how they manage to get some of those doors to open and close.