Friday morning opened with patchy clouds, but no rain! See how we adjust - no rain, no real sun either. This morning's activity was a bus tour to Edvard Grieg's home, and some areas of Bergen during the return journey. The tour ended with the Hanseatic Museum on Bryggen, where we walked through one of the "old" warehouses, configured as it would have been during the period when it was built.
Edvard and his wife Nina had their only child, a daughter, in April 1868, but she died of meningitis just 13 months later. They moved into Troldhaugen in 1885, at the urging of Frants Beyer, who insisted they have somewhere to call home when returning from many long and tiring concert tours. (This is a scan of a postcard I bought in the concert hall.)
Scene out of the bus window on the way to Grieg's home. Note the raindrops on the glass!
From memory, this area is just a few minutes from downtown Bergen, and obviously Norwegians enjoy living on or near the water as much as anybody else!
I wasn't going to show this photo, but since it started quite a trend among other visitors, let me explain.
With a digital camera, the first photo costs quite a bit (the cost of the camera), but the rest are pretty close to free. So I take quite a few photos, on the grounds they don't cost much, and I don't need to use the ones that didn't come out as expected. I also photograph signs, as a marker of where the adjacent photos were taken, and/or containing some information I want to put in the accompanying text.
This photo was in the latter group - just to let me know where we were, and the proper spelling. As such, it is not a well composed image - the left is missing, the sign itself is not horizontal...
But when I stopped to take this photograph, quite a number of other people did the same thing, one commenting on what a good idea. So, perhaps this was the most photographed sign in Bergen on this day. And it's not even an especially interesting or informative sign!
The road into Grieg's home and museum, details of which are at the Troldhaugen web page.
Grieg's home. Only the downstairs is open to the public, and no photographs are allowed.
Hmmm, some jerry building?
A scan of a postcard I bought in the concert hall, showing the inside of the home. This is the living room, with the dining room through the archway. The back wall of the home is (not visible) on the left hand side.
The back of the house, where the tour exits. The groups were packed close together, with another one breathing down our neck! There's a lake just behind me, as shown in the next panorama. The dining room is on the lower level, left hand side, and the living room on the right hand side.
A panorama of the lake, which the Grieg's could see from their home, at least the upper storey.
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Troldhaugen Estate