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.