Walking the other way in Bergen

Bergen has a row of wooden houses on the harbor that everyone photographs, and we had already photographed them, so on our second morning we finished breakfast and turned the other direction along the water with no plan beyond that. That is usually how you find a city. We ended up in Nordnes Park, right out on the edge of Bergen where the peninsula runs out into the fjord. Huge old trees, the kind that were clearly there long before anyone thought to build a park around them. And then a totem pole, which stopped me completely, because it was a gift from Seattle, our sister city. Standing in Norway looking at something from the Pacific Northwest was one of those small dislocations that makes you feel very far from home and oddly connected to it at the same time. Below the park there is a pool and sauna built right into the cliff on the water, and it was full of locals. Not tourists working through a list, just people who live here having a normal Sunday in the fjord. We looped back up toward Fredriksberg Fort and lost a full hour just looking at houses. Every single one is different. Tiny alleyways run between them, the driveways are so steep I genuinely could not work out how anyone gets a car up them in February, and there are gardens wedged into every space that will hold one. We found the cruise port by accident, which felt like a preview of the week ahead, and then ducked into Fish Me for fish and chips and fresh sushi that I am still thinking about. The evening started where Bergen always starts, at the Fish Market on the harbor. Tables of fish on ice, the whole thing working the way it has worked for a very long time. We sat down for whale steak and paella and watched the harbor do its job. Then we walked it off without a map. We went through streets that felt like the art district, past the Kin 44 murals and a run of small shops, and got properly, happily lost. Which is when Bergen handed us the good part of the day. KODE glowing gold in the blue hour with yellow roses out front. The old bandstand in Byparken ringed in pink flowers. And then Lille Lungegårdsvannet, the lake sitting right in the middle of the city, holding the reflection of every light on the hillside under a northern sky in August that never fully commits to being dark. We had dinner on the harbor and then trusted we would find our way back, and what we found on the way was better than anything we would have planned. If you have a day in Bergen before your ship, this is the one I would give you. Walk away from Bryggen, out toward Nordnes, and give yourself an evening with nothing scheduled in it.