Bergen as we walked home from the pub late last night. This was after 10 pm, and the sky was beautiful.
Landmarks like the neighborhood 7-11 (they also have Circle K here) have become familiar and rather dear.
A cat watched us disapprovingly as we made our merry way home after a lot less beer than most people in Bergen seemed to be drinking at Midsummer, but also some aquavit.
Yesterday, meanwhile, was a full day. Our chief plan was to ride the Flåm railway, which takes you on a scenic journey up the mountain above a lovely river valley and village, and back. Here are a few representative shots from that ride:
I actually took about a thousand photos, but you get the general idea.
Then we proceeded toward Bergen, stopping at a living-history Viking museum:
The fjord setting was stunning:
You can see here how clear the water is, but here's a shot straight down, as we were standing on the bridge:
From there we came to Bergen, a trip of about two hours through, again, some perfectly adequate scenery.
And now we're here, for one last day. We'll go to the Norwegian high Mass at the Catholic church here at 11, then knock around until dinnertime, when I think we're going to have kind of a special Norwegian meal, to round off our typical Norwegian travelers' fare of bread and brunost.
Wearing today:
Miss Brooklyn once again, now, with six wearings, the frontrunner dress for June, and the perfect dress for a day and evening in the city. Wearing my teal Kosher Casuals crop top under, for Mass appropriateness. Birk Balis will complete the look, because I know we'll do a lot of walking today. The last full day we were in Bergen, we walked almost ten miles --- even in Trondheim, we only walked about six. It feels cool right now, too, so I'll probably add my blue merino cardigan again as an easily removable layer.
I know this is preaching to the choir, but I have to extol, once again, the virtues of these wool dresses as travel wear. It's been so easy to pack them, carry them, shake them out and put them on, to wear in situations from mountain hiking to city touring. I've never felt inappropriately dressed, either for the weather or for what I was doing. As a tourist it's so easy to feel that you're schlumping around in whatever is comfortable, which is maybe not what you'd be wearing in public at home. But this is exactly what I wear at home, all the time, and maybe for the first time in my life I don't find myself wishing I had brought X, Y, or Z, or feeling sick of anything I did bring. The rota of four dresses was perfect for me, because it meant I didn't have to wear anything two days running (although at one juncture I did do that, in Camellia), and it was easy to pair one sweater or the other with whatever dress I'd put on. This felt MUCH more effective to me, as a capsule, than bringing one or two dresses with a bunch of accessories to change them up. That would have been no fewer moving parts in my packing, and would frankly have driven me insane fast.
Packing, like dressing itself, is highly personal, and one person's effective system might be someone else's nightmare. But this is what has worked for me. It's made me feel attractive and confident every day; it's given me enough variety that nothing I've worn has felt that stale; it's been pretty no-brainy, in that I have not had to come up with outfits. I've just put on a dress and chosen one of two sweaters and one of two pairs of shoes (except on the couple of days when I really did wear hiking boots . . . speaking of what I actually could have left at home, after all the insistence that I bring them . . .), and I was off to the races. As at home, not having to think hard about what to wear, in order to look put together, has been a real gift. I'm kind of an anxious traveler, but this time around, the one thing I have not been anxious about at all is my clothes and how I look in them.
I'll reiterate that I could have done without the leggings. I've literally worn them for spurts of about five minutes before I decided that they were too much. It was nice to have them to put on when we were coming over the Trolls' Ladder into Åndalsnes, where the Eagle-Home was --- in that high country, we were up above the snow line, and it was pretty cold. If we had stayed up that high, or had decided to do one of the hikes in those mountains, I'd have been glad of leggings, but as it was, I really didn't need them, and certainly didn't need four pairs.
I haven't worn my pashmina except on the plane, but I was happy to have it on the plane. I wore my coat on the hike to the lighthouse last week, and otherwise it's sat in my pack, but we've just been incredibly lucky with the weather. It might very well have rained a lot more and been ten degrees colder than it has been, everywhere we've gone. If we'd stayed one more day in Trondheim, I'd have been glad of it --- it was pretty chilly and wet the day we left.
BUT now I have these leggings and this coat for next winter, so I'm happy about that. My leggings stock needed an upgrade, and now I've upgraded. I really kind of needed a more effective raincoat, and now I have that as a top layer for three seasons. Now we can largely just get on with life, my clothes and I.
And pretty soon it will be time for the hike to Mass --- it's about a 25-minute walk, but the day is glorious. Mass in Norwegian should be interesting, but this is the "good" Mass, apparently, with Latin Mass parts and traditional hymnody. The main instrument at the English Mass, I read, is a synthesizer, so we've decided to roll with the tongue of the country we're in. Also, 11 a.m. feels like a better time than 6 p.m. Worship the Lord our God, git 'er done, and have the rest of the day to rejoice in.
LATER:
We made it to Mass after some wandering in the wilderness, arriving in time for a long Norwegian homily that referenced St. Thomas More. The only words we understood, in fact, besides "Thomas" and "More," were "A Man for All Seasons." It was a lovely Mass, with the Missa de Angelis parts and a good choir. Here are some photos of the 19th-century church, which has been nicely restored after a VII wreckovation, apparently:
Our walk home in the sunshine was filled with beauties, too.
We are going to miss this place.
ETA: But I do miss my kids, my dog, and my house. I haven't done any writing since we've been here, other than this blog and captions for my travel photo album. I have concentrated on visual imagery, and otherwise just experiencing things,which I'm sure will turn up later in some written form or other.
So we hate to leave, but it will be nice to be home again.
LATER STILL:
We're back at the flat, sitting out the sunniest part of the day and making preparations to leave --- setting out clothes and toiletries for tomorrow, packing everything else. I've decided, on the way home, to make my daypack my "personal item" on the plane. I was really worried, on the outgoing journey, that what I was carrying on was too much, but honestly, not so. My carry-on backpack fits handily under a plane seat, and that's my big bag.
So this time, I've folded up and packed my purse (which you haven't seen in any pictures, because I haven't taken it anywhere with me since I got here, other than into and out of Air BnB accommodations) in my carry-on, which has more room, because my coat, in its little zipped bag, is in my daypack, where it's spent most of this vacation. My little zippered bag with two sweaters and pashmina fits handily on top of my coat in the daypack, which will make them easy to reach on the plane. On top of that there's room for my belt pack, so I don't have to fiddle with taking it off to go through security. I will put the belt pack on once we are through security, though. Meanwhile, the daypack holds all that, plus my books and Kindle. I have read a lot of Dickens and Janet Lewis on this trip, as it happens, so those were good inclusions. Mostly haven't had the bandwidth for Geoffrey Hill, but I did read some of The Orchards of Syon in airports on the way here, so I'm glad I brought that, too.
Without my coat, the larger carry-on backpack packs a lot flatter, which will be good on planes. Both the plane from Bergen to Amsterdam and the plane from JFK to Charlotte are small, with small overhead bins, so either the carry-on will fit better, OR I can opt to put the little daypack in the overhead bin and the larger pack under the seat in front of me.
I continue to be really enthusiastic about this backpack I bought for the trip, by the way. I don't even know the brand --- it was something I found on Amazon by doing a search on "carry-on dimensions," or something like that. But I will use this thing forever, for every trip I take. It packs so well. It has great space and organization. I love that it has a sleeve for a laptop. It's comfortable to wear and walk with --- no hip belt, as a real backpacking pack would have, but for general travel, it's fine and easy to work with.
I also love the belt pack I bought at the same time I bought my Brooklyn (which, as you'll recall, I wound up with after canceling my order for a Wool& skirt, a decision I have not regretted at all). It's gone everywhere with me, holding our passports in a pocket against my stomach, with room for wallet, phone, lip balm, tissues, and other requisites in other pockets. It's been a reasonably cute travel accessory, and I'm glad I didn't bother bringing an actual belt, because I'd never have worn one.
Anyway, we're getting it pretty much organized. This Air BnB has a box on a fridge in one of the shared kitchens downstairs (our loft is the only self-enclosed flat in this building --- everything else is rooms with shared bathrooms and kitchens) for free stuff, so we'll leave behind the insulated cooler bag we bought to haul our groceries from place to place in, plus maybe some of the low-alcohol beer which was all we could buy last Sunday in Nordfjordeid, where there was nowhere to go out, and we ate sausages and drank beer in the cabin. Surely somebody will appropriate this beer, even though you'd have to drink all four remaining cans to begin to feel any effect.
Anyway, when we got here yesterday evening we just kind of let our stuff explode all over the place, and I thought, Oh no. We'll never get it together. But at this point, more or less, we have.
So our plan is to leave this place by 6 tomorrow morning, to give us plenty of time to turn in our car, get through security, and make our 10:45 a.m. flight to Amsterdam. This is the point in a trip when it already feels over --- your brain is already at the airport, dealing with everything. But we have the last long, beautiful evening to enjoy, once the sun starts to go down just a little. Which of course is all it will go down, but that's all right. Though we will honestly be glad to experience night again, it's good to savor the long, long, long day while we have it.