It became too suddenly the last day of our family cruise... becoming time for our goodbyes to
Bill & Mark as they left the boat to fly back to Minnesota via
Iceland. This has been great time for the six of us... especially for
Mark. He was the beginning & driving inspiration for us all!
Thank you, Markoos [a playful family nickname]!
In Bergen, we visited a Lutheran church with a lively happy vibe & rainbow luminosity...
...with stalls walling-in the pews with gates... a rather severe mix of values, it seems to me, if still handsome.
A gazebo decorates a park like a band-shell...
But, I did love such mix as the sweetly crafted angels hanging around the alter.
Might I have I found this year's holiday card?
Mark became a naturally close mimic...
However, Edvard Grieg is the nation's musical hero.
A composer I have appreciated & loved since high school when I bought a vinyl album of the neglected Broadway show The Song Of Norway.
Bergen is one of the cities of the Hanseatic League, a medieval trade association between the ports of the Baltic & North Seas between the 13th & 17th centuries, rising to economic & political power.
We took this as another of the history lessons as part of our cruise. These buildings are being refurbished yet again... being wood, they have burned & been rebuilt several times over the centuries.
These are the houses whose gables are seen in the photos I made from the boat as we came into the port which were historically the businesses & homes of the Hanseatic merchants. One is now a museum & another is a demonstration of the architectural conservation of the neighborhood, but most are shops for the tourist trade... business continues to be newly lively, even as the herring trade is no longer so vital.
This was my single shopping spree of the cruise. I'd been looking for a gift for Momo, and found a scarf of strong color based on a fragment of salvaged door frame, in one of these antique buildings.
... It's rich & sassy-soft like her...
She's been busily working on the complicated changes happening in our two studios as the GRB Bells business gradually changes location.
We, as well as Alice & John, stayed on in Bergen, with separate plans & hotels, but desiring a dinner double-date to debrief & take our farewells.
We elder siblings celebrated a year & half's successful strategic planning for this cruise. We shared a sweet evening!
Midday the four of us boarded the slick, fun & functional funicular going up the mountain, which we'd seen from the port...
The translucent tube left from a cleft in the rock climbing smoothly into the sky.
Bringing us into a panorama around the boat. A fitting place for a farewell to Viking Saturn... We appreciate your finesse! 
This view shows the tower yet higher up... that being the hike Stephen & Bill made the day before.
We took a bit of the walk up toward along the trail beginning their hike, discovering beds of very lush moss pillows even more verdant than I've seen our own Northwest forests... this being a more "eastern northern European northwest" version.
Norway is obviously another adventure needing larger future than our time to even begin to explore this taste of now... much less digest it.
Stephen & I, had yet another day before following Alice & John because we wanted to visit Troldhaugen, Edvard Grieg's home. [See a future post...]
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Now I'll share another bit of infrastructure in the city park which impressed me... these simple finials gracing hundreds of feet of quiet, elegantly handsome garden railing.
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