Stavanger

We have now spent two full days in Stavanger.

We decided on the first day that we needed some exercise so we headed out of town 30 minutes to climb Mt. Dalnuten which is about a 1.5 hour return hike. From the top of the mountain which is only 400 metres one can get a spectacular view of Stavanger across a sound. We had missed the funicular in Bergen so this was to garner the same experience. We went swimming off a pier into the same sound we had been looking at to cool off when we had Finished the hike. The water was very cold and very salty. We avoided any jellyfish We got home early afternoon and chilled out until after supper when we headed downtown to the harbour where they were preparing for tall ships involved in a race to come over the weekend into the harbour.

I think the two words that best describe Norway is oil money. Since the development of the offshore oil fields in the North Sea starting in 1969, the Norwegian economy has been on fire. Having now spent the last two weeks in Norway, I can attest to the affluence of the country. New housing, new cars, vacation properties, marinas filled with unused pleasure craft. Compared to the other Scandinavian countries Norway is expensive. Groceries and consumer items are double what they are in Edmonton. This is even more noticeable in Stavanger which is the centre of the oil industry. The number of high end watch stores in downtown Stavanger was on par with Switzerland. Being from Alberta we thought that a visit to the Norwegian oil museum was in order. I think Cheryl enjoyed it more then the military museum which is a tall order. It had tastefully done movies about how oil had changed Norwegians especially those working on the off shore rigs, interviews about the life and fears of oil workers on these rigs, movies about the divers who work on the ocean floors. There were all sorts of displays about the oil platforms and the drilling off shore. Those platforms are huge ranging from 50 to 250 metres in depth. There were also displays about the environmental effects of burning all this carbon. I think we were longer in the Oil museum then the war museum. I had an interesting talk with an attendant in the gift shop of how oil had affected Alberta which she said was similar to how it had effected Stavanger. By 2014 housing had become prohibitively expensive in Stavanger.

When we were done we headed down to the harbour to check out the tall ships. The harbour was just packed with 3 and 4 masters. There were at least three large ships from Russia manned by Russian naval cadets. The kids were quite thrilled to be on a Russian naval vessel with real naval seamen who were conversing in Russian. There was also a tall ship from the Indian navy who had the most friendly crew. After an hour and a half wandering around in the sun we headed for home to chill out and start packing for our trip home.

This will be my last blog of the trip. I hope you have all enjoyed following it. I have had some camera issues so I will try to post the photos later. Thank you Ross for all of your encouragement with this blog. Knowing that someone was actually reading it was a true motivator for updating it.

Cheers RobRead more