Yesterday we visited the beautiful city of Bergen, the Edvard Grieg Museum, and a stave church. What is a stave church you ask? The name derives from the building’s structure of post and lintel construction, a type of timber framing where the load-bearing ore-pine posts are called stafr in Old Norse. They also combine Christian and Viking motifs. Loved the dragons! Actually, they are very creepy. Beautiful and cool, but very creepy. Grieg’s house and museum was delightful. Photos and drawings of Grieg and his wife Nina, a drawing of Henrik Ibsen, for whom Greig wrote Peer Gynt, laurels from some of his performances, their original furniture including a chair carved from a tree trunk, his piano, the lucky frog he rubbed for good luck before every performance, the desk where he wrote more than 20,000 letters over his lifetime, and the beautiful stained glass rose he had installed for his wife so she’d know he was thinking of her when he was away. I guess he saved a lot of money on flowers. After touring the house we were treated to a short concert in a beautiful small theater overlooking Grieg’s waterfront composing studio. Unfortunately we were not able to film or photograph the pianist; a shame as he was outstanding. As it was our last night on the ship we were able to get a couple of photos of new friends and crazy bartenders. Enjoy the show!

Deborah