To be honest, I’d never heard of Stavanger (stah-vahn’-ger), Norway until it appeared on our cruise itinerary. I had no idea why we’d stop there until I checked out the excursions offered. Well, it’s in Norway, so I should have guessed that “beautiful fjord” was on the agenda.
We had a lovely four-hour cruise up the fjord and back. The scenery was just like I always thought a fjord would look. The highlight of the cruise was Pulpit Rock. The top of the rock is 604 meters above the fjord. You can hike to the top, but it is a nine-hour round trip from the bottom, and we didn’t have that much time. We settled for photographs.
The square outcrop in the center is the “pulpit.” It’s much larger than it looks in the photo–consider it’s nearly 2,100 feet above my camera.
Continuing down the fjord, we reached a large waterfall. The water is clean enough to drink and the waterfall was accessible to our tour boat, so the captain pulled right up to the fjord wall. The crew filled buckets with waterfall water and distributed a glass of it to each of us.
Potable waterfall water–deliciously cold!
We had a lunch stop at a local restaurant along the fjord and were treated to Norwegian sweetheart waffles. Instead of four square waffles like we usually see, these have five heart-shaped pieces joined at the points. They were served with locally made (possibly by the restaurant owners) fresh raspberry jam. The raspberry season lasts two or three months this far north.
When we returned to Stavanger (that’s with a hard g as in girl), we had time to walk around the pretty town. There was a business section where a crew was setting things up for a festival (lots of small sales booth tents), complete with music (stage and big speakers). In the residential section, the white houses were very picturesque.
As the ship tour director pointed out in nearly every port talk, the town has cobblestone streets and walks and requires comfortable walking shoes.
Later in our walk, we saw this bike parking. Cute!
By late afternoon, we were hungry, so we stopped in a restaurant for a snack. When I saw the first baby carriage, I thought “wow!” and then I saw several more. I can’t believe young mothers would rather push this around than a smaller stroller, but maybe it works better on the bumpy cobblestones. I couldn’t help thinking “rubber baby buggy bumpers.”
With this baby buggy, you’d have the option of carrying the baby and filling the buggy with a lot of shopping purchases.
If it’s the sign icon, this must be the standard baby transportation.
Norway ranks as the second happiest country in the world (after Denmark)–maybe because of this attitude.
A good philosophy!