Start of tour

Lovely breakfast again in our hotel I will miss the natural yoghurt which is so thick you and creaky you think you are tasting heaven! As we are in no real rush to do much this morning, the 4 musketeers go back to our rooms to pack suitcases as we have check out at midday. We head up to the shops and after a couple of false starts, are directed to a store that is likely to sell the crampons I need to attach to my boots so that I don’t slide a over t on the ice. The silly thing is that yesterdayshile we were all wandering about on ice pavements and snow, it was SB, Captn D and Foggy whowere slipping and sliding everywhere in their proposed hiking, wet weather footwear while me in my leather ankle boots had a firm grip on Terra firma, and these were ordinary low heeled boots. That being said, the other threeduly purchased crampons (spikes) for their shoes as soon as we got to the the shop at the top of Mt Floyen, but as I didn’t know what size I needed until I had my actual snow boots on, I waited until this morning to buy mine. As luck would have it, the sales assistant was very helpful and when I told her that my friends had bought similar spike yesterday for 100 krona cheaper, so knocked 50 krona off the price of the epartment store ones! How kind of her. Turns out she was an exchange
student to Perth some time ago and must have a soft heart for Aussies.
Anyway, my purchase is now in my backpack and the other three don’t get a nance to watch me doing silly steps and Mr Bean moves on the icy pavement like I enjoyed watching them!
The town was still very quiet with not many people about so we felt like we had the place to ourselves.

Time for a cuppa and muffins, then a wander back to our hotel in time to check out. SB ad I then go to the government grog shop (keep in mind that alcohol is extremely expensive here and heavily govt regulated). Bottles of even the most average wine are ridiculously out of our budget so SB Buys a wannabe copy of Baileys and I bought a bottle of scotch ( no surprise there). Now back to our hotel and it is soon time to board our coach with our group of 22 to officially commence our Hurtigruten tour. Our local guide for the afternoon is Inge. We have a short photo stop on the wharf on our hotel side and then we head up the mountain to EdvardGreig’s summer home and little museum for a private tour. Although I never played any of his music on the piano, a bit technical for me, I do enjoy his music. The path to his house was ice covered, so we were all thankful for our crampons. Mind you, some of our group hadn’t purchased them so did the silly slippery walk moves all the way. No falls yet, but it is only a matter of time!

Back on the coach and we make our way back into the central are. Inge has lots of good info on housing costs, employment, average wage etc. so that I can show off my new found knowledge, I am happy to share. There is just over 80% home ownership and depending on where you live, if it is a suburb, you are likely to have a stand alone house, but closer to the city, it is primarily flats and apartments. Home loans are about 2% and salaries are generally in the $110,000 to $85,000 Aussiedollar range, but as everything is more expensive here, the salary isn’t so great. Leprosy was a big problem here in the 1800’s and we pass a big hospital set up just for leprosy treatment. We pass homes in the more affluent suburbs and the houses really do look grand but they are quite close to each other and no fences between dwellings. As much as the Norwegians claim to be ‘outdoors’ people, I think they are more likely to hike up mountains or go to public parks, rather than spend any time in their own yards.
We make our way Back to Bryggen where Inge offers a short walking tour around the old buildings. Even though we four had done our own wanderings around here, I went on her walk in order to hear the history of the place.Very interesting history that this wharf area, which is what a Bryggen stands for, wasinitially settled by a German men(no women allowed) to set up fish trading. Buildings were all made of timber and large wooden boxes were built out into the water’s edge and filled with rubbish. Strong tides and fires at sea caused this ‘rubbish’ to become landfill and eventually over time, these huge rubbish boxes reclaimed about 100 metres of land which is where Bryggen is currently built. Unfortunately because it is all reclaimed land, it is sinking, so it is a huge job to support the existing buildings and create new dry foundations for them. I haven’t done the best job of explaining it, but hopefully you get the drift.


So, now it is time to oared our ship the MS Trollfjord. If you would like to follow our journey in real time, try the link below.
http://www.cruisin.me/cruise-ship-tracker/Hurtigruten/ms-trollfjord.php
We are in cabin 462 and it is very comfortable, bigger than the cabin on the European River cruise. Still isn’t a lot of room as such, but will suit us perfectly for now. We head to the security briefing as directed and then a buffet dinner. Time to relax and contemplate what we want to do tomorrow. Kelli has given us some ideas, and SB is keen to do hiking tours which are not my cup of tea. Time for bed and dream of the Northern Lights.