6 more days of Sun!
Lena, our Ithaca friend who was born in Sweden and returns there for a month or so each year, warned us about the rainy weather we would experience in Stavanger. Fortunately, she’s been wrong so far. The Norwegians see some blessing in rain as their electricity is fueled by hydroelectric power and is more expensive during dry weather. Saturday, we took a tourist boat ride up the narrow Lysefjord and viewed waterfalls and Pulpit Rock, a 25 square meters, flat rock, 600+ meters above the fjord. The pulpet doesn’t look very impressive from below, but we’ll try for a better vantage point when we hike up it in a few weeks. On the other hand, the fjord is very impressive, particularly its very steep sides. Incredible, that the excavation was accomplished by the ice. But really not so incredible, considering the huge thickness of the ice. The boat was filled with Norwegians and tourists, including a group of American and Canadian army men on r&r from Afghanistan. On our return to town we sat outside at a restaurant on the harbor and shared some steamed mussels – 4 p.m. in the middle of October and warm enough for shirtsleeves. Sunday we took a 30 minute bus ride to the west of Stavanger and walked through farmland, residential areas and along a rocky coast facing the North Sea for more than 3 hours.