Day 7 - Paris -> Bergen

I got up fairly early to grab a quick coffee and pastry before I leave Paris for good. I got a croissant and a small eclair. They were so good that I got two more pastries to eat at the airport. On the way back, I also bought the iconic French baguette. They were all so delicious, and this will come to haunt me later.

Bergen is a strange town, and I don't fully understand it yet. At first glance, it's a beautiful town. There is a gorgeous mountainous background peppered with picturesque houses.

View from a park in the city center

Flowers are abundant here

But as you walk around the city center, you notice that the prices are ridiculously high. At the fish market, a simple fish and chips plate is about $25. A beer is about $11. A McDonalds' meal is $12. I do notice a lot of tourists. I keep asking myself, "Is this a real town? Or is everything here a facade set up for tourism?"

I quickly left the city center and started climbed up the mountain, towards the houses. This is one of my favorite things to do when I travel to new places. You pick a direction, and start walking. You never know what you'll run into.

These kinds of stairs and trails lead you toward the top of the mountain

As I walked between these houses, I felt like I was trespassing. I was uncomfortably close to these houses, and sometimes it felt like I was walking on their private back yard. I probably wouldn't have done this in the US.

These are the views as you walk up the mountain

View from the top

There is a train (technically, a funicular), that will take you to the top top. I might take that for my Monday hike. In the mean time, I will be taking a two day tour around the area to see the fjords.

 

Oh yeah, regarding the delicious pastries and bread in Paris. I went into a grocery store here in Bergen, and grabbed two pastries, one called a berlinerboller, and another called wienerbrød. Both looked tasty from the outside, but they were worldly different when actually bitten into. 

Two pastries from a Norwegian grocery store, and a boxed iced coffee

After Paris, I think I turned into a pastry snob, as well as a coffee snob. It was a struggle to finish the wienerbrød, and I had to toss the berlinerboller after one bite. And the coffee! Putrid is a fair word to describe it, if being compared to the coffee from the cafe machines in Paris. I also threw it without finishing it. Granted these are grocery level products, but I have a feeling that the French would be too proud to serve sub-par coffee and pastries even in grocery stores.