Bergen!

Stavanger a beautiful city with a neat harbor area and old Stavanger with old wooden buildings. Also a cultural city with lots of museums. Beautiful sunset last night over the harbor. It is an oil city, with drilling rigs that can be seen offshore. This is the main city for the Norway North Sea oil industry.

We made it to Bergen today. Drove from Stavanger on the E 39 through 2 long tunnels about 3 and 5 miles long, plus took 2 ferries, one for 35 minutes and one for about 50. Beautiful modern and efficient ferry system. Also beautiful countryside, lots of water, islands, sheep and cattle, beautiful bridges. Weather has been amazingly good, even in Bergen. Bergen is Seattle's sister city and has a lot of the same weather although it rains a lot more in Bergen. In fact there is a totem pole here in Bergen given to the city by the City of Seattle. High today was probably 68 degrees F, had a little rain, but lots of sun.

Yesterday Mickey and I hiked to the Preikestolen, a beautiful rock perched 2000 ft about the fjord. About 3 and 1\2 mile hike, but took 2 hours each way as the path is very rocky, actually boulders, and steep. But upon arrival, it is one of the most unique places we have been. 2000 ft drop to the water, no railing, little kids running around close to the edge, hundreds of people made the hike, almost no English heard along the trail (maybe twice in 4 hours). Families from all over Europe were making the hike. Check it out on google, the spelling is Preikestolen.

Have had some interesting experience on the highways. They have several toll roads. Tolls are about 26Kr, or USD 4.50 (no dollar sign on Norwegian keyboard). So we were putting in coins on way to Stavanger to pay the toll, but it wouldn't take a lot of our coins (Mom had some left over from her 1994 trip). So we made it through that toll station after a few minutes at the toll booth with traffic backing up behind us (no people at the booth). So a few miles ahead (and we are now about out of coins), another toll booth appears. this time we only had a few coins that worked, so I jumped out of the car and borrowed 6KR (about 1 buck) from the guy behind me and managed to get through. Turns out that if we had known the ropes, we could have gotten a receipt at the first toll station that allows us to use the road for an hour, we just had to scan the receipt at the next toll booth. Of course all the instructions are in Norwegian, so we sort of missed all this. By the way, if you go through without paying, the fine is 300KR or about 50 bucks. So today on the way into Bergen, we went through a "no stop" toll booth. Apparently everyone has passes for the toll stations. After I turned in the car, I remembered this no stop toll booth and called Avis. They told me that I had to pay the toll at a Texaco station and identify my plate number and time since they photo all the cars going through. Later they just added the toll to my Avis bill (about 2 bucks). If I had not called, I would have been fined 50 bucks.

Bergen is great. Beautiful harbor and homes climbing the hills. Had a great time shopping at the fish market, fresh fish for dinner, and lots of neat Norwegian stuff to purchase.

Tomorrow we get on the Hurtigruten to make our way to the Arctic Circle!