Anniversary Cruise--Bergen, Norway

Wayne and I celebrated our big 10 year anniversary on August 9th and decided to do a special family trip to celebrate. We chose an eleven-night cruise to Norway and Iceland that embarked from Harwich Port. We drove just over two hours to the port and boarding Royal Caribbean's Brilliance of the Seas was easy peasy. I highly recommend it!

All packed and ready to go!

We spent the first day and a half at sea, swimming in the pool, visiting the Kids Club (which Lyla is now old enough for at 3!), and trying out the water slide. We all had a blast...the perfect combination of family time and relaxing time. Both girls made friends and begged to go to Kids Club for a few hours each day, which was wonderful, and really enjoyed spending mealtimes together and going to the evening shows each night. Perfect!

The girls enjoyed standing in the window and using it as their stage for their many "performances"!

Our first port of call was Bergen, Norway, which is the second largest city in Norway (after Oslo). We didn't book a tour for Bergen because I had read that it was easy enough to do on your own, which was definitely true. We disembarked and walked straight to the Fløibanen funicular, a cable car railway up a steep hill (320 m above sea level!), which I highly recommend. At the top, you can see beautiful views of all of Bergen (we even spotted our cruise ship!) and there are lots of walking trails you could choose from there. We had no problem buying tickets with no real line but later saw that the line was around the block! We bought one way tickets and decided to walk back down, which was beautiful but did take awhile and Lyla was pretty tired by the end. I think there may have been a more direct route down than we took but we got distracted searching for trolls and exploring the woods. It was definitely fun though and we met some nice people along the way!

Posing along the streets of Bergen...en route to the funicular

Riley's pants are oddly rolled up because Lyla kept splashing in puddles and got Riley's pants (for the Brits--trousers!) all wet!

Lyla leading the way

The funicular

All aboard!

There was a beautiful viewpoint at the top

Our cruise ship is the big one on the right

The sun was starting to peek out for us!

Just one more...

And a family shot

Riley and Mommy

King of the World

We didn't take many pictures on the way down until we reached the streets. We were in a hurry to get back to the ticket office because Lyla really needed the bathroom but I did sneak in a few pics!

I think I could live here!

Clever!

 After we made it back to the ticket office and used the bathroom, it was time for a light snack (very light...a cup of coffee cost nearly $10!!!) and a visit to the Bergen Fish Market. Here are the girls posing happily with a troll. Riley was in tears moments later when she saw the reindeer skin behind her and realized that the antlers next to her were real. For some reason, she has always been intensely concerned about animals and prefers not to eat meat...she declares herself an herbivore...and seeing the reindeer and fox fur was horrifying to her. Just wait until she found out that Wayne tried reindeer, whale and moose at the fish market. Total meltdown.

Wayne sampling reindeer, whale and moose sausage. The whale was his favorite. Yuck!

Lyla checking out the King Crabs

On our way back to the cruise ship with tired legs

So tired she couldn't even stay awake

 After a little rest, everyone was wide awake again and ready for a yummy dinner and beautiful sail away. I finally remembered to break out my camera on the ship!

Enjoying the view

A little windy but beautiful!

 A note about cruise dining...it is about as no stress as you can get in terms of dining with kids. We saw many families choose the buffet for breakfast, lunch and dinner but Wayne loves his food and we all loved the waiters so we ate dinner in the dining room every night. It was long and the kids were occasionally bored (total number of wine glasses broken over the week=1 so not terrible) but everyone ran around accommodating their every need and ours. They brought Wayne multiple entrees nightly to try, Riley and Lyla gigantic sundaes with whatever flavors their hearts desired, and enough sourdough rolls to feed a small army! Riley threw them for a loop with her strange taste...she ate Caesar salad, veggies with ranch dip and fruit almost every night but they rolled with it and occasionally brought soups or other "entrees" for her to try. Both girls have been missing Allan and Jonathan (our waiters) since we've been home!

Both Wayne and I really enjoyed Bergen and felt like one full day was an adequate amount of time to get a feel for the city, although I'm sure we could have found things to do for another day or two. I would recommend that anyone cruising there skip the city tours (unless you have problems walking) and visit the funicular in the morning before it gets crowded. If you have time, go for a walk back down or check out the lake, although the funicular does run in both directions and only takes about 8 minutes each way. Allot time to visit the fish market and do some shopping (we wish we had bought more souvenirs from the market as they turned out to be much cheaper than some other ports of call) before reboarding the ship. Remember that food is very, very expensive so pack a few small boxes of cereal or pieces of fruit from breakfast...we didn't but learned for our next stop!

Next port of call: Geiranger, Norway! Stay tuned!