Tue 03-Aug-2004  Breakfast at the cabin: People are scattered around the cabin's living room and kitchenette, with sheaves of brochures and maps, seeking and proposing different activities and destinations for the rest of the week. Aaron & I were getting excited about going to see a place called Baroniet Rosendal, that features a manor-house from 1665 and a 300-year-old rose garden. We could see from the maps that it would be a couple of hours' drive plus a ferry ride, but that didn't seem unreasonable for a day-trip. Then my dad mildly pointed out that our chosen route has a 6-mile gap in it. The road goes up to a certain mountain, and continues on the other side of it, but they haven't gotten around to blasting a tunnel through the mountain yet. Tack on another couple of hours for the detour. We're evaluating other options . . . . -K    After another lazy slow morning, we got moving ~12:30. Karen, the girls, and I headed back to Haakon's Hall; Emma wanted to see more of the building that had been exploded. We walked around the gardens and the old curtain wall, then we headed up Fløyen. It's a funicular railway from downtown Bergen to the top of one of the many mountains overlooking the town. The railway has two cars on opposite ends of a large steel cable. This allows the cars to counter-balance each other, greatly reducing the energy needed to move the cars. Being the science geek that I am this was a really interesting, I had fun thinking about the min and max cases and the friction involved. I restrained myself from going into a long technical talk about the coolness of this, but it was hard. -A In Aaron's enthusiasm to describe Fløyen, he left out another bit of techno-geekery. He had his laptop out and MacStumbler on as we walked from Haakon's Hall. He hit a WEP-less beep at a doorstep on a cobbled street and immediately unslung his bag and settled himself in the doorway, fingers tapping and gaze intent on the screen. Emma elected to sit beside him, and Lizzie & I went across the street to a park. After a while Aaron called across to ask if we wanted to say anything to Rune; they were instant-messaging while he waited for the file-upload connection to go through. -K When you get off Fløyen, there's a magnificent view over Bergen with mountains and fjords. There's also a restaurant, a kiosk selling ice-cream, a playground, and several trail-heads that lead into various hikes around the mountain. Emma surveyed the terrain, accepted a hotdog (current score, Thomas: 6, Aaron: 3+), climbed the play structure, found a small wooded stream with ferns and moss, and declared, "I never ever want to leave this place." Lizzie found the tall, tall slide, then she found the stairs leading to the slide. She hauled my mother up with her, and before my mom had turned around, Lizzie had hurried to the head of the slide and launched. She landed with a thump, regrouped a moment, panted "Again!" and staggered back around to the stairs. Repeat the scene 10-20 times, place my resigned mother halfway up the stairs as a watchdog, and you'll get the picture. -K