Today, we had a super local day in Bergen! We woke up quite early this morning, to find mum and dad on the phone to some friends. After breakfast, mum, Dad and I decided to venture out and explore the city of Bergen. We’ve been trying to rent bikes for the whole trip, but it’s never worked out, so this morning we installed the app, scanned the bikes from outside the apartment, and were off! We absolutely love the system; you pay 5 € for the whole day and can ride in 45 minute time chunks. The bikes are bright green, and have a spot for the phone to do GPS! The system’s way better than Sydney because there are special docks everywhere, where you have to return the bikes instead of being able to leave them on the footpath wherever you like. The town is also super bike friendly, and there are bike paths, and ramps everywhere. We rode around the back streets, and discovered the city. We stopped at a lovely local bakery for hot chocolate and chai lattes and shared an amazingly soft skillingsboller (a local Norwegian pastry like a cinnamon scroll). At the bakery, we then picked up a loaf of local bread for lunch. We arrived back to the apartment to Audrey and Polly. We then had a GLunch (Glee Lunch) of fresh bread, smoked salmon, cream cheese, salami, etc. After a small amount of downtime, we decided to drive to the local swimming pool, the Nordnes seawater pool. The view from the pool was beautiful! The pool water was heated to 25 degrees but still felt quite cold. Mum, Polly and I went in the sauna to warm up, Audrey went in the small kiddie pool and Ben jumped into the Fjord which was a freezing 12 degrees. We got home around 5pm. We all showered and got settled for the night. Then, I realised that I needed to head to a shop downtown to change the letters from my message board because some of them were missing. The shop closed at 6:00pm, so mum agreed to quickly ride the bikes there. We both rented bikes, and rode 15 minutes downtown to the store, only to arrive 15 min before closing time. We got hooted at twice because we went through quite a few red lights, and I almost rode into a crane and did go head first into a wall, but we made it! I swapped my purchase, and I helped mum pick out some gorgeous earrings for her birthday. We rode back, and met dad & Audrey in the park near our apartment, as there was the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra playing in the park. There were at least 200 musicians, and 1000s of people having picnics on the grass. We sat on towels, and watched for a while before heading home to Polly for our 9pm dinner of supermarket snacks and GLEE. Lovely local day and lots of time today with mum ;-). Off to Paris tomorrow…Yippee!!!