Norway in Three Days--July 31-Aug 2

We have been having some technical difficulties with the computer emails here on board the ship so this is a combined posting on Norway from our wonderful three days. We will not try to post photos here as it seems easier to do so on our fb pages. When we arrive home, we will update the blog with photos.
Friday, July 31...We arrived in the beautiful city of Bergen on Friday morning and were off to

enourmous crab in the fish market

explore the city as soon as the ship was cleared. We try not to schedule any shore excursions in most ports as we we find that it is much more interesting to just start walking and exploring the ports on our own. We had been to Bergen many years ago so we were somewhat familiar with this lovely city so we just started to walk up and down all of the streets and canal walks. This Hanseatic City is extremely picturesque with its variety of colored buildings that hug the waterways. There were some other ships in port so the shopping areas were bustling with tourists like ourselves. We darted into a few shops to look for some me

Bergen alleyway

mentos for our travel shelves at home and found somethings that we liked. We first changed some of our Euros to Norwegian krone but made sure that we didn't get more than we knew we could spend during the three days in Norway.
Most of the day in Bergen was sunny with the exception of a little rain in the early morning as we made our way through the fisketorvet (fish market) area. It was surprisingly nice weather for the remainder of our day of exploring. We did a complete circle of the downtown area before returning to the ship with tired feet from about 7 miles of walking. The rest of the afternoon was spent on board ship. We relaxed and did not participate in the ship's activities as we don't really enjoy the rather silly competitions and games that are provided for the guests. Maybe we have become rather tired of them after 45 cruises.We usually enjoy the evening shows and were not disappointed with the group of musicians/singers that were on stage that evening. They were a British group called the Zoots and they did great Beatles music.

Saturday, August 1...Dawn broke and we had traveled to Alesund, Norway, a smaller town north of

Alesund - stunningly picturesque!

Bergen. We were pleasantly surprised at just how charming and large this city was. We had expected a small town but found that this is a mid-sized city with hardly any tourism. It is a quiet city that was completely destroyed in a massive fire in 1904 and was rebuilt completely within 3 years in an Art Nouveau style. It is absolutely prestine with its rosemalling on the buildings and the canals lined with a variety of buildings all in the same style but in a variety of colors.
We walked for another 6+ miles all over the city, which is built on hillsides with canals cutting through the city at many places. Lots of steep hills that afforded spectacular views from each hilltop.  We walked up to the the maritime university and throughout the lovely neighborhoods and were pleasantly surprised at not only the beauty of the buildings but also how quiet and non-touristy it was. What a nice change to the busy port of Bergen.
After returning to the ship, we decided to try some email and were shocked to see that our computer was displaying a rather ominous warning message that would not disappear, warning us of a critical problem! Since we still have 4 shows to present on board, it was rather stressful for us to se that our computer might not be useable. We know that we have everything backed up on an external hard drive and also a flash drive but we still  hope that all will be ok at today's show.
We went to a movie to try and forget about the computer problem and saw "The Theory of

Alesund is an active fishing port.

Everything". This is an excellent story of Steven Hawking and a film that we had wanted to see. We then attended the first of three production shows presented by the ship's singers and dancers. They did a great job. Off to bed with apprehension about the computer!
Sunday, Aug 2...John decided to do a restore on our computer this morning and brought it back to early July. This eliminated the warning message that had taken over our computer screen. We hope that all will work on the computer but we decided to only use the computer for our shows and do the emailing, etc here on the tablet or on the cell phone.

Our ship in Geiranger Fjord

Octagon Church on a Sunday morning

kaffe! Ja da.

Our ship cruised through one of the loveliest fjords in Norway, Geiranger Fjord. We did not get up at predawn to see this as we knew that we would been reversing the trip later in the afternoon as we exited the fjord so we could enjoy the scenery then. On ship docked in the small village at the head of the fjord and we spent the day wandering up the hills to see the spectacular views of the town and the fjord. The scenery was unbelievably gorgeous in every direction we looked as we climbed the steep hills up to the octagonal church sitting high above the town. The weather again surpised us with only a few drops of rain so we have felt very lucky in Norway. Guess the trolls have supplied us with unusually dry conditions for all three ports in Norway.
We did find a place to spend a few kroner, as john ordered a cup of wonderful cup of kaffe in perfect Norwegian.  This was nowt easy, since nearly all Norwegians speak flawless English.
We finished or 6+ miles of walking in this charming farming community back at the ship. We found an excellent place to park our tired feet in the solarium and watched as we slowly sailed out the fjord passing numerous waterfalls and farms perched high on the hillsides. There didn't seem to be any roads leading to many of the farms, so we surmised, that the people rowed their boats to the shore and then hiked up to their farms, many seeming to be very high up the mountainsides above the water. What a different life than what we are used to. This fjord reminds us of many in Alaska but not as rugged or snowing as the Alaska arms. It was fun to stay up and see that the sun still had not set by 10 pm when we made our way to our stateroom. Goodbye to Norway and off across the Norwegian Sea to the Faroe Islands.