Tuesday we explored some art museums in Bergen as well as wandered the twisty cobblestone roads in the older part of town. The art museum here is split between 4-5 buildings, each with quite a small display and entirely focused on Norwegian artists. The Munch collection was pretty large and it was nice how they’d divided the work into three sections showing the different phases of his evolution as an artist (first, emulating Renoir, Gauguin and other prominent artists of his time; second, very moody pictures where he attempted to show emotions through color and style; third, more vibrant and colorful paintings. I didn’t get any photos of phase 1 but here are two from each of the other phases.
There is also a lot of street art in the Skostredet part of the city. Most of it is not to as high a quality as the street art in Oslo – also, the bad graffiti artists didn’t seem to have respect for the nicer works so some decent looking things were marred by other graffiti. I read that before Banksy was famous he did a few works in public areas in Oslo and the city painted over them, not realizing that he’d later be a celebrated artist. Anyway, the picture with the lady holding a cod (below left) was particularly good.
Even though the forecast had said intermittent rain, we instead got intermittent sunlight and the old harbor area was prettier today than yesterday. We climbed up in the hills awhile and had nice views over the bay.
Here is a small sampling of the old houses we saw while wandering the steep and narrow back alleys above the old town.
In the late afternoon, Megan enjoyed a nice hot chocolate and we lounged a while in a nice lobby at the art museum. On Wednesday we flew back home and I’m posting this from the airport in Los Angeles as we wait for our final connection to Santa Barbara. It was a great trip and we feel like we saw a lot of different aspects of Norway, but we will be happy to be back home and not living out of the suitcase again!
Balents Trip Blog 