Norway does not traditionally have a tipping culture. However, tipping is not entirely absent. When should you consider tipping and how much?
The Bergen Card covers public transport, museum entry, and a handful of restaurant discounts across Bergen and the surrounding region. Whether it saves you money depends on what month you're visiting and how many museums you plan to see. The full list of inclusions is on the Bergen Card website, but the list alone won't tell you whether it's a good deal for your trip.
Somewhere around the four-hour mark, the pine forests thin out and vanish. The last stunted birch gives way to nothing. And then the train breaks above the tree line onto the Hardangervidda plateau, and the world goes white and silent and enormous.
Bergen is small. You can walk from one end of the centre to the other in twenty minutes. But still it´s easy to waste time by crossing the same ground several times. This plan keeps you moving in roughly one direction each day. Day 1 covers Fløyen, Bryggen, and the museums on the waterfront. Day 2 takes you up Ulriken, through the local neighbourhoods most tourists skip, and out to the edges of the fjord landscape.
Bergen wraps itself around a single harbour. This makes choosing where to stay simple, you will stay in or close to the city center, but where? Every neighbourhood on this list is within walking distance of Bryggen, the fish market, and the Fløibanen funicular. The difference is atmosphere, not access.
Bergen has three Michelin-starred restaurants, a legendary hot dog stand that's been grilling since 1946, and a 96-year-old fish cake recipe that was once shipped weekly to Norwegian embassy staff in Paris. You can still waste serious money eating badly here if you wander into the wrong place on Bryggen, though. What follows will stop that from happening. Here´s a selection of 9 of the best restaurants in Bergen at all price points.
Must see Attractions
A concentrated, ordered presentation of a single sculptor´s entire public programme that lets you study material, form and expression across more than 200 works. It is free, open 24/7, and captures the universal human experience (joy, anger, grief) so perfectly that you don't need to know anything about art to feel it.
A concentrated, walkable collection of authentic Norwegian buildings and interiors that includes a medieval stave church and dedicated galleries for costume and craft. It is the only place in Oslo where you can physically walk from the Black Death era (1300s) to the Nokia era (1990s) in less than 20 minutes.
A preserved polar exploration ship with connected exhibition galleries that let visitors board the vessel and examine original expedition equipment and ship construction in close detail.
Top Hotels in Norway
125 years old. Rooms are individually decorated with hand-picked art, and the lobby bar, Bar Boman, houses one of the country's largest private collections of Edvard Munch prints. But the real draw is Theatercaféen, the grand Viennese-style restaurant on the ground floor, with its high ceilings and mirrored walls. It's been the place in Oslo where actors, politicians, and locals meet for over a century. Nationaltheateret station is 100 metres from the front door.
A restored 1930s power station with original Art Deco tilework, a rooftop pool overlooking the city, and seven restaurants under one roof. There's nothing else in Oslo like this. If you want a hotel that makes you cancel your afternoon plans because you'd rather stay in, this is it.
Built in the former headquarters of the Norwegian America Line, the company that shipped thousands of emigrants to the US in the early 1900s. More character than anything else in this part of Oslo. The cocktail bar sits in the old booking hall where passengers once collected their tickets, all dark wood and low lighting. Two-minute walk from the airport train platform.