David Armstrong
After calling at Voss, the train makes a rapid descent to the sea, showing off even more terrific views -- this time, of Bergen, with its busy but clean harbor, tidy downtown and houses sprinkled across the city's seven hills. Funiculars and cable cars go up and down the hills, providing aerial overviews. The train terminates at stately Bergen station, in the heart of the city.
The Bryggen waterfront district is the historic core of Bergen, which was founded in 1070. From the SAS Royal Hotel Bryggen, 18th-century wooden houses and balconies overhang a warren of narrow passageways about a two-minute walk away. Also walkable is the harborside fish market, which thrives on Saturdays. It's not unusual to see a small fishing boat crewed by as few as two people pulling up to the docks with a fresh catch. The plentiful restaurants around the market specialize, logically, in seafood. At the open-air market, you can find excellent, red-fleshed Atlantic salmon, moose sausage, reindeer sausage and smoked whale meat -- which people who have tried it say is tasty and unexpectedly low in fat. Also unexpectedly, Norway defies its progressive reputation by being one of the few countries to embrace commercial whaling. Troldhaugen, the home of the composer Edvard Grieg -- a Bergen native and probably Norway's most famous musician -- is a short drive from town. Grieg's lovingly-preserved Victorian home, where he lived and wrote music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, houses an evocative collection of his personal effects, including Grieg's Steinway piano. An intimate, sod-roofed concert hall, added in 1985, graces the grounds. It's all a fitting tribute to the gifted composer of Peer Gynt, a local boy who made good. For more information, contact: Innovation Norway, 655 Third Ave., New York, NY 10017; phone 212-885-9700.
RSS
