Bergen

Bergen is a harbour held in the palm of seven mountains, and it rains: two hundred days a year, a fact the city wears like a good coat. Along the north side of the old harbour stands Bryggen, the row of tilted wooden wharf houses in ochre, red and white where the Hanseatic merchants ran the stockfish trade for four hundred years — burned and rebuilt so many times that UNESCO listed the pattern as much as the planks. At the harbour's head is the fish market; up the hill from it, the Fløibanen funicular climbs in six minutes to Fløyen and the view; and out past the fortress the boats leave for the fjords, of which this is the gateway.

The traveller walks Bryggen's passages between the leaning houses to the museum that explains them; eats at the fish market, or better, at a table above it; rides the funicular up Fløyen and walks down through the forest, or takes the cable car up Ulriken, the highest of the seven; visits Grieg's house at Troldhaugen on its lake for a lunchtime concert; browses the KODE museums for Munch and the Norwegian light; and gives at least a day to the water — the boat into the Nærøyfjord, the Flåm railway's vertical mile, or Hardanger's orchards in May.

The Guide's honesty: it will rain, and the city is better for it — the light after a shower on the wharf is the whole postcard —; Norway is expensive in the way that ends arguments, and the supermarket, the fish market's simple counters and a good breakfast are the traveller's friends; the cruise ships arrive in summer and the wharf fills between ten and four; the fjord tours are worth booking a day ahead; and the Bergen railway from Oslo, seven hours over the roof of the country, is one of the great train journeys on Earth and the right way to arrive.