Page 192 - WINE DINE AND TRAVEL FALL 2021 DISCOVERING SANTA FE

Foodies are also keen to sink their teeth into
this UNESCO City of Gastronomy. Take the Taste
of Bergen tour, which veers from airdried “stock-
fish” in the historic Bryggen district to waffles at
BarBarista, a psychedelic fever-dream of a local’s
hangout. For a beer-tasting tutorial that’s fun
even if you don’t know your head from your ale,
book ahead at Bryggeriet Restaurant and Micro-
brewery overlooking the marina. Don’t miss a
stroll around the Fish Market, where you can buy
caviar in a tube. CAVIAR IN A TUBE, people. De-
spite, or perhaps in part because of that, Bergen’s
culinary kudos are well-deserved.
But once you’ve gorged on Bergen, “the gate-
way to the fjords,” you really must move on to the
sweet temptations of the Hardangerfjord. The
second longest fjord in Norway, it stretches more
than 100 miles inland from the Atlantic.
To reach it, I catch a bus from Bergen to
Norheimsund. It’s an hour-and-a-half ride
through bucolic hills threaded with waterfalls, an
amiable journey which would nonetheless be
much improved if the bus had a toilet. (Did I men-
tion the waterfalls? SO MANY WATERFALLS).
From Norheimsund, I board a ferry to Eidfjord,
a tiny town that serves as a launchpad for tours to
Vøringfossen, the most famous waterfall in Nor-
way. Not that this boat takes us directly to Eid-
fjord. No, this is a ferry with attention deficit
order, prone to distractions, like a dog who has to
“mark” every fire hydrant it passes.
In this case, those fire hydrants are quaint little
Norwegian towns, because the ferry operates
much like a local bus---a basic, albeit beautiful,
means of getting from A to Z, stopping at several
letters of the alphabet in between. It takes nearly
three hours to reach Eidfjord, but I’m not com-
plaining. Tracking misty blue mountains as they
advance and then recede in our wake, watching
cotton-candy clouds flirt with sheer granite cliffs,
ogling coquettish cascades that are suddenly ex-
posed as our boat rounds a bluff---all conspire to
lull me into a hypnotic reverie.
In Eidfjord, I meet Sigmund Saebo, a taxi driver
with a passing resemblance to Albert Einstein,
who is happy to chat as we drive up to Vøringfos-
sen. The subject turns, as it often does among

192 WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE FALL 2021