In the morning we found out who bought all the tacky Norwegian souvenirs.  There were about 3 large tour buses parked at the entrance and all the passengers were mingling around the waterfall and the shop stalls.  I guess the buses did not frequent rafting centers.

Today we were headed to Bergen so we decided to try to find a reasonably priced B&B before we left the campsite and did not have internet again.  All the semi reasonably priced B&Bs were fully booked of course and Bergen seemed like the most expensive city yet.  We decided to stay in a campsite a bus and tram ride away from Bergen and it was the most expensive cabin we had stayed in and also by far the worst. It was sub-par and the facilities were dirty.  It took us 40 minutes to get into Bergen but, once there, it was quick to walk through the center to the fish market for lunch.

We had high expectations reading so much about it in all the tourist books, that when we got there we were stunned at just how small it was.   It only consisted of two clumps of stalls, every single one of them selling the same thing yelling at tourists to sample their products.  It was far from what we had envisioned of a dead sea of various creatures as far as the eye could see.  We walked around it in 5 minutes.  Nevertheless, we bought sandwiches there anyway and were not too impressed.

We visited the Hanseatic Museum and Schøtstuene after, which focuses on the German traders who lived there between the 3th to 17th century.  It was one of many museums in Bergen but probably one of the most interesting ones.  One thing we noticed about Norwegian cities and towns is that there will always be some sort of museum there, no matter how small or insignificant, baiting tourists.  Most were folk museums, but we also saw fishing and road museums.  Since Bergen is the cultural capital of Norway, it was expected that they should have lots of museums, so this one was probably more worthwhile than many of the others such as the knitting museum.  While AU has its big things, Norway has museums.

The old Town of Bergen was adorable.  Particularly eye catching was the well endowed unicorn.  We ate Chinese food for dinner since our guide book said that Chinese food was the most reasonably priced and we agreed, though reasonable for Norway, not for any other country.  Despite the charm and museums we were slightly disappointed in Bergen and this seemed to be the common trend of Norwegian towns and cities so we decided to skip Skundeshaven in lieu of more nature.

Canberra is an interesting city since it’s new and plotted out to be a government city, which really reminded me of Washington D.C because of the symmetry.  The difference was that D.C is very pedestrian friendly and tourists stroll to all the monuments and buildings without a problem. Canberra is a very car oriented city. The first thing we visited was City Hill, a large park in the middle of a roundabout with a flagpole in the centre. The thing was that there were no pedestrian crossings to City Hill, so we had to dash across the three lane roundabout. There were park benches for people to utilise but no safe way for people to get there. On another occasion to get from the parliament building to the part of the city which had restaurants we found ourselves running across 3 different highways that had no pedestrian crossing, so that was an adventure in itself.  I thought the city plan was a bit ridiculous.

Also, it was rather unkempt. The main area in front of parliament was nice but City Hill was rather untidy.  This is probably because no one could get there easily to maintain it. There was also a path along the lake which led to the National museum of Australia which reminded me of the path that leads to the Jefferson Memorial but it wasn’t pretty at all, so that aspect needs some work. The National Museum had some really nice exhibits and was very informative and it’s well worth spending a few hours there.

Us on top of Parliament. In front is the old parliament and all the way in the back is Australian War Memorial

Next we visited the parliament building which was very spectacular. It is fairly new, opening in 1988 and therefore, it’s a very modern building with some interesting architecture. I particularly liked that the lawn stretched all the way to the top of it and the roof was basically a lawn which visitors could visit. We took the tour and learned about the building and the Australian government; it’s free so it’s well worth doing.

Parliament

Next we visited the old parliament which was much less impressive and the tour was too detailed and focused on politicians which I’ve never heard of so it was geared towards Australians. I didn’t particularly enjoy the old parliament but it was clear to see why they needed a new one.

Then we popped into the National Gallery of Australia which was also a good museum and we wanted to spend more time there but since it was 5:00 it closed and we had to leave.

We had to keep pushing further south and crossed the state border to New South Wales and therefore only had a brief stop in Byron Bay which reminded me of Noosa. I was getting a bit bored of the beach-small-backpacker/tourist towns at this point because they all began to look like each other. It was over-run by run down campervans and tanned people in slinky clothing. I didn’t mind only spending a few hours there and moving on. A little further was the town of Ballina. There’s nothing there so they built a restaurant right next to the main road but to attract patrons they built a giant shrimp on top of it. This big thing was sadly one of the more impressive ones.

We stayed at Lennox Head that night and then continued south towards Coffs Harbour, but we didn’t quite make it there since we stopped at a campsite before Coffs Harbour.  We spent the rest of the day skipping rocks on the beach, jumping on the jumping pillow, and trying to make friends with a few resident wallabies who were less friendly than the ones at the zoo.

Jumping pillow

Coff’s Harbour is home to the first of Australia’s big things, the big banana. It’s located next to a banana plantation and also now an amusement centre which contain an artificial ski slope, an ice skating rink, tobogganing and a monorail tour of the banana plantations. We didn’t do any of the activities or buy any really tacky souvenirs shaped like bananas, and you name it they had it in banana shape and color.

The Harbour itself is really pretty and there is an island, called Muttonbird Island, which is connected to the harbour by a manmade breakwater so everyone walks to the island and has a short hike around it, which is well worth doing. A real-scale model of Captain Cook’s ship the ‘Endeavour’ made the scenery even more beautiful and ironically we had seen the same ship in Sydney in Darling Harbour. It is a museum and we wanted to go in because we didn’t visit it in Sydney but the exhibit only opened the next day and we had to be in Port Macquarie by then.

We spent the day in Townsville and were really surprised at what a nice town it was. I know there is rivalry between Cairns and Townsville and Cairns people believe it is so much prettier but my unbiased vote is for Townsville. We visited the Townsville museum which was actually really nice and gave us something to do. Unlike the rest of the tourists we did not go to Magnetic Island, which we do regret, but we decided to save some cash and since we were definitely going to go to Frazer Island we figured we didn’t need to go to every Island.

Townsville Jungle Gym

Then we drove down to Bowen, where we had trouble finding a campsite since they were either full or no one answered at reception. At least there were a lot there so we found one that was open but it was the oddest campsite we had been to. It was full of travellers who were fruit picking and huge groups of them were sleeping in tents and under tarps, so it wasn’t the cleanest campsite we stayed at nor was it too cheap.

We went grocery shopping which was quite handy in the van because instead of having to unload groceries from a car to the house we just moved them from the cart into our “house.” I loved having a fridge and kitchen in the vehicle, because it was so convenient. If we were hungry we’d just pull over and make lunch. That’s probably the only thing that was handy on the van though.