April 26th, 2023 Day 113 of 128

Bergen, Norway

Today was our last port in our visit to Norway. We had previously had our excursion cancelled so we had opted not to reschedule a new one as there was nothing that jumped out at us. It was a wonderful choice. We slept in till about 8am and then grabbed a light bite again from the Neptune Lounge before heading off the ship. We bundled up for another really cold day outside with the forecasted high of 40 degrees today. We walked up and then down a hill, on a road that was reminiscent to Lombard street in San Francisco and we went to the water front area. We visited a Starbucks that was in a building built in 1877 and it was across the street from the Mc Donalds in a building built in 1710. It is still so strange to me to see buildings standing that far surpass the history of almost anything we see back in the United States (and it was a Mc Donalds!). I’d be very remiss not to tell you about the crazy weather we experienced today. We got caught in the rain, and snow, and even hail multiple times throughout today. There was even a time that the sun was shining and we almost had to take our jackets off, and then ten minutes later we were putting our gloves back on and zipping our coats back up. It definitely made for a memory and we will look back on it fondly. We found the Bergen fish market and walked through it in the morning. We purchased a yummy pastry and a cappuccino before going off to do some shopping until noon when the seafood restaurants opened inside the fish market. Our goal for the day was to enjoy some crab and we succeeded. We enjoyed our visit here, had a great opportunity to do some walking, bought a couple clothing items, got our magnet and just enjoyed being in an amazing place without the hustle and bustle and time constraints of an excursion. I think I need to do that more often in my future travels. We were back on the ship by about 2:30pm and we took some time to do our laundry, work on our Project Linus blankets, and Megan got some schooling done. We had dinner this evening at 6:00pm. Today was quite food day. Pastries in the morning, lunch consisted of whale carpaccio (it was a fist for both of us), Norwegian caviar and three types and crab, and dinner was a Norwegian themed specialty dinner in the Pinnacle. Five courses of lovingly prepared food by the chefs onboard with local ingredients just for this dinner. I have really come to love these specialty meals, even when they last for hours. After dinner was “done” we had a lovely conversation with our friend Tina who is in charge of the Pinnacle Dining room. It was really great to sit and talk with her and just have some time to socialize with her when she wasn’t working. These people are our family now. Having spent so much time together and getting to know about them and their families and their lives outside of cruising we have really come to love and appreciate them even more. It will be sad when we have to say goodbye and we hope we run into them again on future sailings. It is close to midnight and we are just now crawling into bed for the night. Tomorrow is a beloved, long awaited for, sea day. We are looking forward to our sea day routine and to have a day of rest. Please enjoy all my food photos from today. It was a yummy, yummy day!! The photo of the ship was taken by a passenger from the top of the Fløibanen funicular that we did not go up.