They came back to the hotel from Mount Floyen at almost 10 pm and fell into sleep very quickly the night before. In the morning on the sixth day of their trip, they got up at 7, had a brief breakfast, then decided to visit two more places before getting onto the road to Alesund.
In each town in Scandinavia, visitors generally can go three places: Museum, University and Cathedral. Yesterday, they had visited museum, so they walked out of hotel to head to Cathedral.
Because of its geographic location, Bergen experiences plentiful rainfall in all seasons. However, it wasn't raining this day, though it was a bit cloudy, they could walk without worrying about to get wet.
"Do you know Bergen is actually Goteborg's sister city?" She just remembered that she never mentioned to him.
"Oh, I read it online before I came back to Scandinavia to visit this time, but forgot to ask you as well. When I lived in Goteborg for that short period of time, we seemed never talking about it."Paused for a minute, "Actually, do you know it is also Seattle's sister city as well?"
"Oh, I almost forget that you are from Seattle, as I said, in my memory, you are always from Beijing. Yes, I recall after I learned that you are residing in Seattle, I briefly learned about the city and glanced at that piece of information. Of course, if you didn't mentioned, I wouldn't be able to recall it." She responded.
"There are always reasons two cities to become sisters, I guess, Goteborg and Bergen are second largest city in their respective countries." He made the comments, "There are a lot of similarities between Seattle and Bergen, such as rain."
"And we are both having fun in this sister's house."She joked.
They took several photos for each other and a joint one in front of the Cathedral helped by another visitor. After spending 20 minutes, they walked back to hotel. Their plan was to check out and drive the car around University of Bergen, then on the road up to north.
University of Bergen is a pretty good school, Goteborg University has a lot of exchanges with them." She briefed him.
"Yes, I heard about it before too." He agreed, "University of Washington has an exchange program with them as well."
"I notice you might try to care about my feeling, so have tried not to talk about your adoptive hometown too much. However, you just can't help to connect things to Seattle anyway."She teased him, "It is ok, though I have never been that city, I heard a lot of good things about it. It sounds very beautiful and I may go there to stay a couple of days, especially you are there."
"You noticed?" He asked, "Right, I know you don't really like I talk like an American too much. Of course, you should come over. It is beautiful, and if you don't mind, I want to say more about it to you. Anyhow, it is the city I know the most now."
They didn't spend too much time on the campus because it didn't relate to them directly anyway, though it was a really beautiful school. At 10:00 am, they were getting onto RV555 to head to Alesund.
"Have you made up your mind which route are we going to follow?"She looked at him asking.
Holding the wheel and starting appreciating the breathtaking views outside the window, he suddenly came back to reality: "Not really, however, up to Forde, we probably only have one option - taking E39. It seems taking 3 to 4 hours to get there, then we can decide if we go through National Road to enjoy spectacular views of Fjord or have to stick on E39 to save a couple of hours."
"I guess we probably have to stick on E-39, otherwise we might arrive in Alesund at midnight." She estimated.
While chatting and appreciating, they reached the point where they had to take the first ferry on this route. They were pretty lucky not to wait too long. However, the whole process took them 50 minutes to complete: Car on ferry from Ytre Oppedal to Lavik.
After getting onto the land, they didn't waste even a second. In this part on E39, the view became more mountainous. They had experienced so much water in the last two days, so didn't mind to enjoy glancing the green trees all over the hillsides. During the next one hour's drive, they sometimes kept silent, sometimes exchanged the impressions. She occasionally closed her eyes to enjoy the songs on radio, though the signals were broken from time to time, while he was keeping his eyes on road where the turns were pretty sharp.
Going through the narrow but flat roads and a dozen tunnels, they arrived in Forde at 2:00 pm, a little bit late than planned but not too much.
They actually were very hungry up to this moment, so got out of E-39, stopped over a restaurant named Pikant. This restaurant was located by a river and they sat down at a table outside. Even it was in the afternoon, they could hear someone was singing inside the bar. The waitress told her that at night, even professional singers often performed here.
After translating the waitress's words to him, She joked:"Do we want to stay here over night, then you can come over to sing and make money to pay for the hotel?"
He figured what she implied and responded: "Yes, I recalled in a bar close to Sergels Torg, oh, maybe closer to the bridge to Gamla Stan, on that Saturday night, a pop singer performed very well, we were both impressed by him very much. I bragged to you that I was a pretty good singer too and could become a pro if I had kept trained. You said the same to me. Right?"
She smiled, "Yes, you remembered?!" She paused, then kept saying: "Last year, I passed by there when I was on a business trip in Stockholm, I just noticed that bar was replaced by a new lifestyle cafe serving healthy foods and drinks. So, we won't be able to go to the same one this time. Anyway, there were still several others around there we can go."
"That was a hilarious night. We drank a combination of wine, beers and cocktails but sill pretty sober. Do you remember a woman got drunk and seemed looking for a date all over the bar there?" He reminded her.
"Oh, ya, she was quite drunk, though was beautiful and dressed up, no man seemed interested in her. Probably everyone was scared of." She did remember.
Getting back to the car, they realized it was the time to make decision: "Though driving through National Road is exciting, we probably won't have enough time left." He tried not to disappoint her but had to warn.
"Don't worry, I am fine." She understood,"As long as we can be together, it is much better than appreciating any views." She wasn't that type of woman always talking sweetly but did show her profound affection to him sometimes she couldn't hide.
He was silent for a second, then kissed her for a million years...
They spent the following four hours on E-39 by either the lakes or the rivers connected to North Sea. After taking another ferry, they could tell Alesund was just kilometers away.
When they got the key to their room from the front desk at the hotel at waterfront, it was almost 9:00 pm. Restaurant had been closed, so they had to walk to a small cafe to grab coffee and dessert as a brief dinner.
Coming back to the room, they were already exhausted. "Looks like it is a beautiful town, let's spend sometime here tomorrow morning." Though, she still wished they could do it tonight.
"Sure, let's do it tomorrow morning."He concurred, "Ok, I haven't talked about my adoptive hometown for the rest of the day after we had briefly chatted in the morning back in Bergen."
"What do you mean about this?" She didn't get him this time.
"Alesund is a sister city of Tacoma, another city in our State, south of Seattle."He learned it on Wikipedia because no one mentioned this to him even he worked on a consulting assignment in Tacoma several years ago.
"As you said to me this morning, Bergen is similar to Seattle in several counts, so they are natural to be sister cities, is there any similarity between this town and the town you referred to?" She apparently didn't catch the name of Tacoma in the first place but was very interested in it.
He could feel she started caring about where he lived, "I don't really know, never have a chance to study it. But I will do some researches of Tacoma the first thing in the morning before we visit the places here."
"Ok, you should take me to Tacoma when I go seeing you." She started planning her trip.
"Of course." He definitely was willing to do it.
She fell into sleep in the next 10 minutes, he was almost done for the day as well. Though he planned to write a sonnet for her at the end of every day for the rest of the trip after climbing onto the top of Mount Floyen, he wasn't able to do it this night.
Ok, let me write her another one while driving through Atlantic Ocean Road tomorrow. He soliloquized, then his mind was fully covered by all of beautiful dreams...
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