Faith

The most incredible part of planning falls in the lap of Faith – to find contacts.

Two weeks ago Dan found a 1-800-number for Icelandair. With that phone contact, I discovered two important components. First, the company offers flights to Bergen two days a week during the summer – Tuesday and Friday evenings. Second, the company offers a multi-city ticket enabling us to fly into Bergen and out of Oslo. All this for the lowest price of any airline competitor.

Both the Tuesday and Friday flights arrive in Iceland about 6 AM, the next day. Wednesday's arrival has an 11-hour layover before taking off for Bergen. The Icelandair saleswoman said customers could leave the airport for a look around Reykjavik to see the geothermal hot springs among other things. Wednesday's departure for Bergen is after 5 PM arriving about 9:30 PM. Then we would stay over in a hotel, have time to rest Thursday morning, spend the afternoon looking around Norway's second largest city and depart that evening on the Hurtigruten cruise line to take us to Trondheim.

With a Saturday arrival, the flight departs a couple hours later for Bergen. Landing in Bergen happens mid-afternoon. With this option we could take a quick look passing through the city and depart on the ship that same evening. Or we could check into a hotel and have a day-and-half city tour and leave with the ship Sunday.

Personally, I favor the Tuesday departure which would allow for a look around Reykjavik Wednesday, put us in a Bergen hotel that night through Thursday morning, allow us to explore Bergen during the afternoon and evening and have us launched on the ship that night.

Why? Months ago, I pulled up north sailing charts for the Hurtigruten. I learned the ship sails daily from Bergen at 8 PM, continues northward through another day and arrives the following morning at 8 AM in Trondheim. Given this this schedule, if we launched with the Thursday ship, we would arrive Saturday in Trondheim. That would allow us to travel to Grandma Lena's relatives during the weekend – usually a good time to visit people.

The next step is finding a phone contact for the cruiseline... preferably an American agent.