Delightful Visit from Edna Dugan
On my 5th trip to the airport in Stavanger, Edna finally arrived last Monday – 24 hours later than expected. The weather was Ithacating, but after my emergency trip to the dentist for a fractured tooth (eating gorp) we walked around downtown with Marijke, my Dutch friend and prospective tour guide, who showed us the sights. Tuesday and Wednesday continued rainy/overcast so we walked toVaulen, around Godalen and met Larry at IRIS. Roselyne and Jean Claude came for a glass of wine on Tuesday and we, along with Jenny and Bahram Fathi, went to their house Wednesday evening. Wednesday, Edna and I lunched and toured with Ellen and her sister who once sang and worked with Up With People! The typical Stavanger weather prevented us from doing strenuous, rocky hikes, but we walked lots and Edna met many of our friends. Thursday we went to Bergen and stayed at the historic Solstrand Hotel in a gorgeous setting (reminding me of Lake Louise and Hokkaido) a half-hour south of Bergen. The weather was clearing and we went for a lovely walk along the fjord and swam in the indoor pool, enjoyed a good dinner and even danced a little. We met the owner of the hotel whose late husband studied at Cornell’s Hotel School. Friday we struggled to find where Larry was to go in Bergen, gave up and connected with Willy via cellphone calls. Edna and I walked around Bergen and took the cable car up 300m., enjoyed lunch overlooking the city, walked down and connected with Larry and Willy. Edna departed early Saturday morning and we drove back via Avaldsnes, once the capital of Viking Norway, and still quite rural and Skudneshavn, a lovely sailing coastal town with picturesque homes. Stavanger has enjoyed wonderful sunny weather and blue skies for 5 days in a row!

While Ithaca wallowed in 16 inches of snow (an extreme lack of climate neutrality according to an email postponement of a climate neutral Cornell panel) we had incredibly beautiful weather here this past weekend. Saturday we took a boat to Kvitsøy *, a small (1/3 Nantucket size) island in the midst of lots of islands near Stavanger, and walked all around midst the few houses, town center and through sheep farms to the sea. At the Saturday evening bridge, we ate dinner outside. On Sunday after a 40 minute ferry ride and half-hour drive, we climbed Preikestolen (Pulpit Rock), at 604 m above the Lysefjorden, a rock outhanging over a vertical cliff. The tabletop including large crevass is about half the size of a football field and was quite full on Sunday with a few groups even barbecuing on portable grills. The hike is very popular and Sunday there were more than 150 people and at least 20 dogs making the trek from 270m base. I knew I wasn't Swiss fit, but I'm not even Norwegian fit as the hike up took me over 2 hours and the book time is 2 hours. Coming down was faster. There were people running down and I saw one girl going up barefoot. We walked up with a group of 3 men from Kurdistan who insisted on sharing their Kurdistan tea with us, and coming down 3 Italians insisted we try some of their wine! Yesterday, I went back on the ferry to the same area with Norwegian friend Ellen, and Dutch friend Marijke to hike for a few hours mostly on the property that Ellen's daughter and her family owns. We ate an early dinner outside on the deck of her daughter's vacation home, overlooking the sea.

*Kvitsøy is a municipality in the county of Rogaland, Norway. It has as many islands as there are days in the year, 365. Kvitsøy is the smallest municipality in Norway (in area) and has a population of 508.
Kvitsøy is an archipelago situated 2 nautical miles (4 km) northwest of the coast of the Stavanger peninsula. The largest island is connected with only a few of the other islands in the archipelago.

Where are the Jelly Beans?
The Frey chocolate factory outside Zurich makes 30 million chocolate bunnies each year and all the Zurich confiseries are filled with amazingly intricate candies including some cute and sometimes funny candy animals. In Stavanger, the favorite item is a large decorated and colorful egg and there’s much less chocolate. I saw jelly beans once in Zurich but can’t find them now that I want them. Norway shuts down beginning tonight with grocery stores open on Saturday, but hotels, restaurants, business and other stores are closed until Tuesday. Very few people are at work with Larry; the cafeteria is closed until Tuesday. Both Switzerland and Norway view Easter as a holiday not a holyday. After the long – or short – winter everyone wants to spend time outside. So skiing and visiting one’s hytte (rustic cabin) or traveling seem to be what people are doing. As for us – we’ll be searching for jelly beans.