Bergen

What an amazing city. Great weather today and we saw lots of Norwegian history! Started with Hakken's hall and Rosenkranz tower. This fortress served as bergen's home for the King with a large medieval banquet hall complete with tapestries. The tower is from the 13th century and has 5 floors with a dungeon in the rear. Winding narrow sone staircases up take you to a fabulous harbour view. Then we walked through the Hanseatic area of Bryggen. Old wooden German all male cod merchant houses which revived the town after a plague wiped out half of Norway's population in 1350. Germany controlled it for 4 centuries. Cod  made Bergen rich. The Hanseatic quarter burnt down more than once with its tightly packed wooden houses. We toured one old one on the wharf which is now a museum. We also checked out the leprosy museum (really creepy but extremely interesting). Wanted the infamous sanitizer gel from the cruise ship in the worst way when we left! They even had an amputated dried up foot for us to check out. Yuk! Those people lived a miserable neglected existence! The hospital burned twice. Did not know that up until 19th century about 3% of Norway had leprosy, known as Hansen's disease for the dr who studied it.

Went up the fenicular and had sunshine to enjoy our tea, cake and the panorama of Bergen. Did not have time for munch's Scream in the art museum or composer Edvard Grieg's home. We will just have to come back. 

Got a phone call tonight from Sten Valen, the grandson of the woman who went to school with grandpa and who owned the farm where they had their cottage in Skanevik. Our guide also found a third cousin of mom's also named Engemund. He will be there to meet us tomorrow as well. We are so sad Judy is not here with us because she did all this research which allowed us to meet these people. Sten says he can show us the farm his family used to own and the path grandpa used to take to go to school, which is still standing. Tomorrow will be a cool day......