Yesterday, we took the train from Oslo to Bergen.

It’s not your everyday city-to-city transit. Climbing slowly upwards out of Oslo to an altitude of 2,200 metres above sea level, the train crosses Norway’s ice-scoured and sere granite Hardangervidda plateau before descending into Bergen in the Southwestern fjords. It’s a 7-hour jaw-dropping journey which takes the breath away.

We have to do it all over again to return to Oslo at the end of our trip. Poor us.

And now we’re in beautiful, fickle-weathered Bergen where it’s quite cool, windy, and occasionally wet. Luckily, the weather waited this morning until after we’d taken the funicular to the top of Mount Floyen, 320 metres above Bergen.

A little bit of retail therapy was required after we descended back to Bergen from Mount Floyen, to find some more flexible walking shoes for me. Since Berlin, Little Toesy won’t even look at my hiking boots, let alone entertain the idea of putting one on, so I’ve been limited to walking sandals. That’s been okay until now, but the idea of visiting the Arctic in sandals is a bit, well, daunting.

Gulp! … buying walking shoes in uber-expensive Norway?? On the recommendation of a hotel staff member, we visited a sportswear outlet store we would never have found for ourselves, and for NK350 (around AU$58) bought a cheapy pair of walking shoes that Toesy found reasonably acceptable. That would not normally be noteworthy, except that the shoes were less expensive than a haircut for Ian (around AU$60).

So we put the idea of a haircut on hold, and wandered on. Somewhere down near the ferry port, we noticed a tiny barber’s shop in one of Bergen’s old, tilted wooden buildings. We went in. We can’t be positive who got the bigger surprise, but it wasn’t us. Three African faces looked very startled. They were Eritrean, we subsequently learned, and obviously not used to Caucasian customers. Ian got a very respectable haircut, with great attention to detail, for only AU$25. A nice Eritrean experience!

Tomorrow evening, we board our little Hurtigruten ship, the MS Nordkapp, to start our sea journey to far northern Norway. Our previous experiences with shipboard wi-fi has been far from positive, so If you don’t hear from me for the next two weeks, don’t think we’re lost at sea, just simply lost in wi-fi land.