Putting the Fun in Funicular

Today we rode the Fløibanen top the top of Fløyen, a mountain practically downtown. Well we rode to the top of the funicular, the mountain continues on beyond the end of the line offering great hikes. 

We walked through this cool looking street market on the waterfront. It was hailing / raining but we have the right clothes for this weather so we were all good. Also the weather changes every 5 minutes or so. 

You can purchase your ticket online, or at a kiosk in the station, or from an attendant at the station. You can purchase a ticket for half way up, all the way up, or all the way up and back down. Hiking both up and down is free, but we chose a round trip ticket. It was just about $21.50 USD each after the conversion. 

The views on the way up are incredible. 

You know you are exactly halfway there when you pass the other vehicle. Funiculars are unique because they only have 2 cars.  They operate at the same time, with the car coming down, helping pull the car coming up so it is more energy efficient. It's an old but cool technology. 

When you reach the top, there are a few more stairs exiting the station and then views!

There is something for everyone at the top. 

Cashmere goats to pet

a cool playground for the kids and the young at heart 

you can rent this treehouse or the yurt in the background 

there are also bars, places to eat, and a gift shop. 

We chose to go hiking. There are long hikes and short hikes, easy hikes and hard hikes. 

We chose not to do this hike...

There is even a short hike to a lake where you can canoe. 

It seemed there was some sort of severe weather event that knocked over a bunch of trees. 

After our hike we ate lunch at Fløirestauranten. It was a bit pricey, but the food was great and the ambiance was fantastic. 

Alcohol here is expensive but this brewery is great. 

Donna had the seafood soup that Bergen is known for. 

After lunch, more views. 

After taking in the rest of the views, we headed to the station for our trip down. 

On the walk back to the hotel I took photos of a few murals. 

The Fløibanen is a great way to spend half or even a whole day while in Bergen. 

It's Been A Minute (or a few days)

 Albuquerque, NM

No Internet

A few days ago we were happily watching The Great British Bake Off and Netflix stopped streaming.  Our internet was out!  I checked online and the website appeared to show an outage and that Century Link was working on it.  We didn't think much of it so Donna read and I played Animal Crossing the rest of the evening.  

The next morning we woke up to the internet still being out.  This time I looked harder and there was no widespread outage so I contacted our host.  After a few hours they came back with, "It's a localized outage and the internet will be back on Tuesday."  It was Friday now so that meant a long weekend and a long Monday with no TV.  We do get out but we also stream a lot of TV when we aren't out.  A few months ago we dumped Verizon for Google Fi and love it.  We have unlimited data so I figured we would try to connect via Hot Spot tethering.  It worked!  We were streaming The Great British Bake Off again!  All of our problems were solved until our tethering stopped working on Saturday.  I was troubleshooting the problem when I found out our plan only allowed 5 gigs of tethering.  I had gone through 9 gigs and Donna had tethered 6 gigs so Google was pretty generous to a point.  I looked an the next Google Fi tier up gave us 50 gigs of tethering so I made the change, but just for this month.  

On that Monday we saw workers working on the lines.  The trucks said Century Link so we were optimistic.  Turns out there was some sort of fire that took out a poorly protected DSL thingy (my words not theirs).  We saw this DSL thingy when we first arrived in Albuquerque.  It was a post with tons of wires coming out of it, exposed to the air.  At the end of the day Monday we still had no internet.  I assumed there was one more step that needed to happen to get things back up and running.  

On Tuesday there was another Century Link truck at the spot where the lines were fixed and buried.  I was sure this was going to be the fix and it was.  On Tuesday afternoon we had internet again.

What Have We Been Doing (Besides TV)?

So for the past few days we have been taking it easy.  I have been playing a lot of pinball at various locations around ABQ, we went hiking to try to see Scaled Quail, we have been cooking, and we also went to The Rio Grande Nature Center State Park (I had to look this up because I thought that was the name but it sounds so weird).  

The Rio Grande Nature Center State Park has a birding area inside with giant windows and a speaker pumping in the sounds from outside.  It is AWESOME!

They had a learning area for kids (and me).  You could make animal tracks in a sandbox.

One night we watched Meteor!  It's a 70s Sean Connery disaster movie that a pinball machine is based on.  While watching I saw 2 pinball machines in the movie.  It's like pinball inception!

Here is info on the pinball machine if you are interested.  I wanted to see the movie because most people don't know the pinball machine is based on a movie because you can't really tell.  Also I did a search in Google for "meteor" and they play a cool little animation.  Check it out.

We went to a beer release at La Cumbre Brewing.  It was great so we bought a bottle to take to Phoenix and share.

Francis ignored the other dog at the beer release

We also bought very cheap onions.

We learned that all of the Javelin throwing we have been doing at the park is illegal!  They should put this sign at both entrances.

I played a lot of pinball. I want to practice for all of the tournaments I will play in when we are in Phoenix.

There are 4 Boxing Bear brewing locations and three of them have pinball so I have been to them all.

I also got to play, what I believe to be, the ugliest pinball machine ever made.  It's fun but it's UGLY!

We have 1 more week here in Albuquerque and then we do a 1 day drive straight to Phoenix for the rest of the year.  We still have a few things to do before we leave so we aren't in a hurry to leave or anything.

If you missed Do you Know the Way to Santa Fe? (probably not, in fact you probably saw it 3 or 4 times by now) check it out.