Then it was time for a potty break, but we couldn’t find potties anywhere. We tried a tourist information building, but no luck there. It was getting close to emergency time and we were about to eat at a fairly expensive restaurant to have a late lunch and use the bathroom there, but we could see a hallway that led into a mall. Malls have bathrooms, right?
Well, upon asking someone working in a shoe store, they have bathrooms on Level 5. We were on Level 2. And we couldn’t get the elevator to stop on our floor, so it was time to head up a bunch of escalators before finally achieving relief. That’s when I entered the men’s bathroom (I assume Mom had the same experience in the women’s room) and discovered the meanest trick I’d ever seen in a shopping mall: using a stall cost 10 kroner. (If you didn’t have a 10KR coin, you had to pray that someone was about to get out of a stall and you could sneak in behind them for free. “Damn the man! Let my people poop!”)
In between the bathrooms was an information desk, so when we were both finished, we asked the guy behind the desk if there was a store where we could buy a phone that would have pre-paid minutes (as opposed to a two-year plan, given that we’re only in Norway for four weeks—not very cost-effective). There were two phone stores in opposite corners of the first floor, so we headed back downstairs.
The store we picked was a good one. The guy behind the counter understood what we were asking for and recommended a pretty simple phone. It came with 50 minutes, we bought a card that added 150 more, then sat back as he punched in the codes and threatened to set the phone’s language to Norwegian. Oh, plus it had a really nice fan that blew in from the door that Mom could stand in front of so she didn’t overheat. Assuming everything works okay and the phone doesn’t drop lots of calls, we’ll consider it a successful purchase. I’ll consider it doubly successful if I can bring it home and have the Sprint store use it to replace my old phone, but I gotta wait until we get back to the States for that.
We didn’t have any more shopping to do at the mall, so we headed back to the hotel. As we passed by the street that led from the harbor to the funicular, we saw more proof that the place was built for tourists. When we got there earlier, the line was relatively short and we went up on the second run. That afternoon, the line stretched out of the building and down the street a block and a half. A popular attraction, apparently.
Shortly after getting back to our room, we remembered we hadn’t eaten lunch yet. After a filling breakfast, that universal language of tummy rumbling hadn’t really hit yet, so we decided to visit a small fortress on the coast before finding a restaurant to have dinner.
This fortress wasn’t nearly as impressive as the other two, but that’s probably because it was more outdated. I guess protecting the coastline isn’t as cracked up as it used to be. You could see the expanse of the harbor from the walls and there were still various cannons lurking around, but no armed guards with bayonets. I guess they still keep about 20 soldiers at the post, but if you decided to poke at one, they could only beat you up instead of stab you. Whew!
We looked for a place to eat after leaving the fortress, but it didn’t take much wandering before we realized that the only options were over by the harbor, so it was back to the tourist trap strip to find something. We looked at a few places, then picked one because of a little billboard in the front with the cook’s recommended choices. It included wolffish, reindeer and whalesteak. We made it a goal to eat authentic Norwegian cuisine while we’re here, so…
As a result, Mom and I have now eaten Norwegian trout and whalesteak. Or that’s what they told me I ordered. I can’t be sure because while waiting for our food, I never heard anyone in the kitchen yell, “Thar she blows!” Regardless, the meal tasted pretty good.
After dinner, we headed back to the hotel and called it a night. We were doing the “Sognefjord in a Nutshell”—as exciting as the fish market was, traveling through the fjord was the big attraction for us in Bergen—and being well-slept was a priority. Time to catch some zzzzzzz…
