After our day of travel on Sunday, we decided to make Monday a down-time day, where we would take advantage of all the AirBnB had to offer and not leave it.

Back when we were planning the trip, we’d debated whether we wanted to stay someplace in town or if the attractive AirBnB out in nature was the way to go. Each had its advantages: town offered food and entertainment in walkable distance, for one, but the AirBnB offered serene Norwegian nature, kayaks, and a hot tub. If we were lucky, like one guest a few weeks earlier, we might even glimpse the Northern Lights from the deck. Dreamy.

So why not spend a day enjoying some down time in the house we’d booked? After two days of traveling, this felt like the right answer.

We awoke on Monday to a pearly gray sky with a promise of rain in the forecast. I made some coffee – Norwegian drip coffee machines are a deconstructed version of the machines I’ve come to know and love for their simplicity, but I figured it out – and we passed a very relaxing morning brewing pot after pot, chatting, and gazing out at the view.

One of the many luxuries on offer here was a fishing rod. In fact, while Dan was originally a proponent of staying in Bergen town, it was a single photo of a fish on a line that convinced him maaaaybe this place wouldn’t be too bad.

“I know I’m not going to catch anything,” he said to us, “but I want to try.”

On the train the day before, he’d asked Kelly to ask the AirBnB host about Norway’s fishing laws, and it turned out that one could fish anywhere without fear of arrest; only salmon fishing and one other I can’t remember require special permits.

We layered up and wandered down to the edge of our little peninsula, where a memorial monolith for King Håkon stood like a stone lighthouse along the water. Its rough structure recalled Viking aesthetic, so I was surprised to read it was constructed in 1921.

Even just clambering over the rocks and listening to the waves crash was lovely. Dan explored his tackle box while the rest of us wandered the rocks and watched as boats passed by, causing wakes to send waves against the shore.

One of the perks of the AirBnB, according to the website, was getting to watch the different boats pass by, and the host was not wrong. Over the few days we were there, we saw massive cruise ships, a destroyer (a shadow cruising past at night, we glimpsed from the hot tub), a funny snub-nose boat we nicknamed “pug boat”, cargo ships, small fishing boats, passenger ferries, and others whose names I couldn’t guess. It was always a joy when, gazing out at the water, a massive ship would suddenly appear from behind the houses.

We watched a few ships while Dan cast his line, and then Michael took turns. Kelly and I decided to let them fish and go find the kayaks. Our host had messaged Kelly to say the “kayaks are ready for you”, but the question was where they were ready.

They weren’t in the lawn, nor were they at the docks. We wandered our cul-de-sac aimlessly, looking around, until an older man appeared and called up to us.

“Hello!” he called out. “I’m Lasse’s father. I have the kayaks.”

His own home was right on the water. We’d been admiring it from where Dan and Michael were fishing; a man had been out on the deck feeding the birds, and below the deck was a cavernous sort of marine garage that opened out onto a small beach. This was that man, and this was his beautiful home.

Kelly and I found ourselves standing in the garage as the man pointed out the kayaks and insisted we wear life jackets. Kelly is a kayak connoisseur, explaining later that she (and Dan) had taken some kind of marine sports class as part of their college education, so she knew a thing or two about balancing weight in a kayak and paddling.

My kayak experience, on the contrary, was limited to one excellent afternoon zooming around mangrove forests in the Philippines with Sarah, and one rather windy afternoon of paddling for a mere fifteen minutes with my mom in Rumson before ditching it altogether and getting lunch instead.

Kelly decided to try it out first and test the water. She was prepared, wearing flip flops and a water resistant jacket. I decided to swap out my furry boots for my duck boots. When I returned, Kelly was paddling back to the shore.

“It’s pretty good,” she told me. “I paddled out to the guys. They caught a fish!”

At that moment, out in the shipping lane, a boxy boat painted in army camouflage flew by, kicking up spray behind it as it tore through the water. I awkwardly clambered into my kayak while Kelly got it set up.

“I’ll go in first and then I’ll help you in,” she told me, but I was barely listening. As I nodded, I felt the wake from the camouflage boat hit the shore and suddenly I was gliding off the beach and out into the fjord. Before I could think, the kayak listed to the right and within seconds, I was soaked. My arm, which I’d plunged into the water to anchor myself, was drenched up to my shoulder. The kayak filled with water, as did all of my clothes. Somewhere behind me, Kelly was scrambling to grab the end of my kayak and pull me back up. I decided to stick to the land for now and went for a run instead.

We had imagined, or at least I had, scenic runs along harbors and coastlines, but what I found in my research was that while there were some hiking areas, they were all at least 5k to reach on foot, and if you’re only out to run 5k, that puts you in a bit of a pickle. Instead, I ran the road we’d hiked up yesterday with our luggage, then turned left and ran along rolling hills of road. While running along the main highway wasn’t the most aesthetic of runs, the sidewalk was wide and occasionally, I’d crest a hill and look down at calm, glassy harbors and moored sailboats, so it was quite nice.

We relaxed in the house in the afternoon, with Dan and Michael venturing to a different grocery store for more beers while Kelly and I dumped out a 500-piece puzzle depicting six or seven dogs whose expressions of happiness ranged from adorable to borderline psychotic, with three of the dogs looking like you might encounter them on the sidewalk sometime and the other three looking like cartoon creations. It was as if the artist started out with concentration and aesthetics in mind but ran out of time and left the chihuahua to AI.

Still, it was a fun way to pass the afternoon, and when the guys returned, we all headed back outside. Kelly and Michael took the kayaks out for a pre-sunset cruise while Dan tried his luck at fishing again, with me enjoying the fresh air beside him. He immediately caught a pollock, and we then spent an hour or so casting hopelessly as we watched the fish swim away in the clear water below. Our fishing adventure ended when Dan got the line snagged on some rocks at exactly the time Kelly and Michael returned. He managed to pass a knife down to Kelly, who kayaked out to where the line was snagged and cut it.

I decided now would be a good time to try kayaking again, so with Michael’s help, I got into the kayak and sailed out after Kelly. It was a beautiful time to be out, with the sun setting and the water glassy and smooth. We did a quick tour around the cove and then returned back to the AirBnB for showers, pizza (which Dan whipped up using the pizza oven), and our puzzle, which we finally completed around 11pm.

Modeling Norwegian efficiency, Kelly and I had named the dogs. This helped us complete the puzzle faster.

“I think I have Toby’s eye,” I’d say, holding up a piece.

“And I have Whoopi’s ear,” she’d tell me, and we’d exchange. Dan watched this back and forth with curiosity before asking, “Are these famous dogs or something?”

I opened my mouth to tell him that no, Kelly and I had just named them based on either dogs we knew or creatures they resembled (Whoopi was named for Whoopi Goldberg, who’d loaned her voice to the hyena in The Lion King that the dog in the bottom right of the puzzle most resembled), but Kelly was quicker. Calmly placing a puzzle piece down, she replied evenly, “Yes. This is Toby. And this is Whoopi.”

“And this,” she said, pointing at the unfortunate Chihuahua, “this is…Stimpy. From…Stimpy and the Brain.”

Then we dissolved in a fit of giggles like children and Dan walked away. This is the sort of thing I appreciate about vacationing these days. Late nights partying and Sundays lost to hangovers have been replaced by finding complete happiness and joy staying in a beautiful home on a beautiful fjord with fantastic company and finding belly laughs over something as silly and common as a puzzle of dog faces.

It was a perfectly relaxing first day in Bergen.