We’re back in Norway for a few days, this time in the country’s second most populated city and former capitol, Bergen, which has been superceded on both counts by Oslo, to the south. We’re here to meet our friends, the Giles, whom we met through home exchanging several years ago. We arrived first, on Friday, and they’ll be joining us on Saturday. Sunday we’ll spend the day together on a fjord cruise and scenic train ride.

We arrived in Bergen in the mid-afternoon in the rain. No surprise there. Although Bergen is the warmest of the Nordic cities due to the Gulfstream, it also one of the wettest, a result of the encircling mountains. The bus from the airport dropped us off right at the end of the harbor across from the fishmarket.

Dale wisely choose this weekend for our visit because there was only one cruise ship scheduled to be in port; consequently, the town was relatively quiet. We checked into our hotel, the Augustin, to drop off our backpacks, then made a beeline back to the fishmarket for our evening meal.

First, we visited all the vendors, sampling their wares. This one gave us a taste of whale meat. Tastes like chicken. Well, not really. Tastes like rancid beef jerky.

We had a hard time choosing our first course, but settled on King Crab legs. Here’s what they look like before going into the pot:

We considered the lobsters for our main course: they come in all shapes and sizes here:

And also the shrimp:

And the oysters and scallops (the oysters on the left are from France; those on the right are from Norway; scallops in the middle):

But the fish platter won out: salmon, cod and halibut, same species as in Washington, but for some reason, it just tasted better here.