Wednesday, May 27, 2015

To the Arctic Circle and beyond: Day 5 - in which our voyagers retrace their steps...

The Norwegian Air Shuttle flight to Bergen leaves Gatwick at 10.50 a.m., which is all very well if you live in London, especially South London. It isn't so great if you live in Suffolk but, luckily, Ros's term-time flat in London was available to us, so an early, but bearably so, start as we headed back to Norway.

I don't use Gatwick very much, but check-in and security were rather straightforward, and the South Terminal was crowded but not overly so. We grabbed breakfast and headed to the gate for our flight.

Nice, eh? A bit strange, but very Scandinavian...
Norwegian offer free wi-fi throughout the flight (an unfamiliar but welcome facility), so the journey passed relatively easily and we arrived in Bergen on time, grabbing a taxi to our hotel. It was our first reminder as to just how expensive Norway is - you always find yourself mentally exclaiming "how much?" with a slightly panicky air of disbelief - but we arrived at the hotel, checked into our room (with a balcony, no less) and made a reservation for some traditional Norwegian fare - there may have been reindeer and fish involved.

I checked the Hurtigruten website. The MS Trollfjord was making its way south towards Bergen and was on time. Things were beginning to look up...

Dinner was... interesting. Excellent food, service of a decidedly amateurish streak. But then, Norwegians don't really tip - they assume that people get paid a proper salary - so some of the incentive is missing. Wesselstuen is a rather traditional sort of place, with an emphasis on the food, rather than the ambience. However, that suits me just fine, especially if there's reindeer on the menu.

Replete, we had a brief stroll around the town in bright sunshine before heading back to the hotel for a good night's sleep...

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