We started the sight-seeing day with a short walk to the Leprosy Museum, the preserved buildings from one of Norway's oldest hospitals.
Studying English descriptive material in the main hall of the Leprosy asylum.
Active from the 1500s, with the current building constructed in the 1800s, this was where most leprosy patients in Norway were confined and also where Armauer Hansen did the research that showed that leprosy was the result of infection with a bacillus, and neither hereditary nor the product of poor living conditions, as had been thought. (Leprosy is also known as Hansen's Disease.)
Typical two-bed room, no more than 6x6 feet.
We walked around downtown a bit, then took Bergen's single light-rail line a fair distance out of town to visit a Stave Church. We reached it down a woodsy path along with a coach-load of French tourists.
Stave churches were the earliest form of church architecture in Norway. This particular one actually burned to the ground in 1992, and has been painstakingly reconstructed using authentic materials and techniques.
One of the caretakers explained that "stave" is from the same root as "staff", a stick, although in this case the sticks are tree-trunks more than a foot thick. The structure is formed by inner and outer rectangles of vertical staves.
This is a pretty slow day for us. The official Trip Planner is thinking we could have used one less day in Bergen. To pass time, we rode the light rail on to its end in the suburbs, and back to its other end in central Bergen. Some sort of concert of euro-pop music was happening on the central plaza at really deafening volumes, bass notes that throbbed your chest a couple of blocks away.
About 7pm we walked around the still-throbbing pop concert and up the main pedestrian street, the Torgget, to another church for another organ concert. This involved climbing several flights of stairs up the steep hill just below the church.
This church, Johanneskirke, is a gothic brick edifice but inside surprisingly open.
It has an intricate wooden roof.
The concert wasn't as enjoyable as the one last Sunday. That was partly due to the selections in the program, partly perhaps that this organ is older.
Heading back down the Torgget we were people-watching and noticed that at least 25% of them were eating ice cream.
Thursday afternoon we get on the Hurtigruten ship MS Polarlys. The Hurtigruten ("express route") company operates a fleet of boats running regular schedules north and south along the coast of Norway.
We'll be on the Polarlys two nights, debarking in Trondheim Saturday morning. Internet connectivity on the ship is iffy, it will probably only support email if that. So our next post will likely be late Saturday the 19th, from Trondheim.
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