I was a little surprised. Stravanger is the Norwegian petroleum hub. I thought it would be heavily industrialized, with storage, LNG facilities, tankers, and related smokestacks all over the place. It wasn’t that way. A lot of that kind of stuff is there, but it’s up or down the coast a little. The city is quite nice. There are the traditional old houses and narrow lanes, interesting new architecture, and old structures dating back to as early as the 12th century, though only portions of those buildings remain. What’s there was rebuilt in the 15th, 16th centuries and more recent times.
You walk out of the bus station, and it’s already nice, right across the street.
My ankles can feel a little cold in Norway
Here are a couple of obligatory pictures of traditional houses and a comercialized traditional lane.
Here’s an overview near the harbor area.
Here’s the Stravanger Cathedral, originally built in the 12th century. What you can see was built in the 15th or 16th century.
I just wanted to toss in a photo of an interesting thing they do halfway often. That is to build fronts not perpendicular to the street, but angled over the walkway or street in front.
Stavanger is known for its artwork on buildings. In truth, I didn’t see most of these myself. Myung went walking around looking for them and was quite successful.
We had no trouble spending three days there, but the main reason we went was to go to Pulpit Rock. I posted a couple of thumbnails in my last post. The hike up there was a little hard, even though it’s only 3.8 km, but we made it. Lots of people who didn’t look to be in very good shape made it. I was sore for about three days. Myung, not so much. She’s in great shape.
Much of the way up is what they call Sherpa steps. Much of the rest is more uneven rock steps, and there’s some easygoing. Here are photos going up.
One last turn…
And here are the money shots.
View from Pupit Rock. That’s the edge behind us
It was getting dusky when we descended.
View toward the North Atlantic from just below Pulpit Rock
That’s going to do it for now. From Stavanger, we flew to Copenhagen, which is just a one-hour bunny hop. That will be my next post. Until then, be well, all of you.