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Bergen
Seas: flat
Weather: Blue skies, sunshine and 28⁰C
We were up early this morning as we wanted to head up Mount Floyen on the Funicular. We ordered room service breakfast – pastries and coffee and we were heading off the ship at 7.45am for the short walk into town.
The funicular queues build up really quickly as they are only scheduled to run every hour and can carry 100 people on each trip. As it would be a busy day with tours and cruise passengers, they were running every 15 minutes and probably couldn’t do any more than this. There were several early tours from P&O and also quite a few coach tours in the area. Jon had pre-booked tickets … once we managed to get the code to be read by the machines, we were on the next funicular up and at the view point by 8.45pm.
It was a really clear morning and it was already pretty hot. We were really lucky with the weather as it rains for 300 days of the year in Bergen, so having a dry day here is a complete bonus.
The Mount Floyen viewpoint has great views over the town and across to where Britannia was berthed. It was quite first thing but it was getting busier with every Funicular that arrived. If you’ve children, there’s lots of play areas up the top of the mountain … a giant troll and plenty of other wooden carvings to spot in the woods.
We had only bought a one way ticket for the funicular – last time I was up there, we had to queue for an hour to get back down! As the walk back down was meant to take the same time, we opted to do this. The walk took us down through the pine forest.
Every so often, there was a view over the town. It was meant to be a 3km walk but it felt much longer than this. Being beneath the pine trees, it was pleasantly cool. Lots of trolls, interesting signs and chairs carved into tree stumps kept the interest on the way down.
The last section that brought us back into town was down steps. Yarn Bombing had really taken off on Norway – the trees lining this final stretch of the walk were wrapped in knitting!
We met up with Mum and Ann in the fish market – Mum didn’t fancy heading back to the Ice Bar so we found a little cafe in the park for coffee and ice cream. In the square, there were games made from recycled objects for you to try – which Callum and Jon enjoyed testing out.
Mum and Ann left us to continue shopping and we walked back through the fish market, just stopping to buy a pot of fruit as Callum was starving!
Back on board, we headed up to the buffet for lunch – chicken & salad for me… chicken & chips for Callum and a burger & chips for Jon. It was now really hot – I went for a frozen cocktail – a strawberry daiquiri and Jon a pint of Peroni. Callum had his usual diet coke!
Afterwards, we headed to the Sunset Bar before an early afternoon sail away. We were leaving Bergen at 2.30pm to start heading back towards Southampton. We headed up onto one of the higher decks as we would sail under a bridge and the clearance looked pretty tight!
The central pool area was packed with people for the Great British Sailaway. Apparently, it was 28⁰C here in Bergen, only 25⁰C in Barbados and rain/thunderstorms back home. We definitely picked a great week to be away. Just hope everything was OK back at home.
We pushed off and pirouetted around in the harbour before heading towards the bridge. It was close with the funnels just having a couple of metres clearance. One thing we heard earlier, was that Queen Mary had been in port a couple of days earlier – even though she is much smaller than Britannia, she is a heavier ship and had to leave at low tide to clear the bridge.
The sail out took us between lots of small islands – some really small and uninhabited – and was a good sail out. We headed back to our cabin and Jon sat out on the balcony for a bit, until he had an unexpected shower. The cabin immediately above us was a suite. They had asked their butler to wash their balcony down. That’s fine BUT a shame the guy doing it didn’t check to see if there was anyone was sat out on the decks immediately below as Jon and the people on the balcony immediately below us had an unexpected shower. Phone, binoculars and Jon all got wet, but luckily no other electronics out on deck! There was a fair bit of soot on the deck – only to be expected on back decks though.
Final formal night of the cruise this evening and we met Mum and Ann at the table. They had received an afternoon tea invite – a special afternoon tea for those completing back-to-back cruises. They said it was lovely but only 8 or so people had turned up.
Dinner this evening was quite nice – Mum and I had Gravalax, Ann the mushroom and puff pastry and Callum and Jon the Prawn Cocktail.
Meal finished and as per usual, Jon, Callum and I headed over to the Marlow Suite for the Syndicate Quiz. Not our night tonight – we ended up in third place. A couple of questions we had two answers to, but went the wrong way!
