NORWAY TRIP

STAVANGER
The fjords are really my favorite area with the deep rugged valleys and green growth and so many waterfalls and beautiful scenery. To the west of Stavanger is some of the places people go for those really famous photo shots of the rock between boulders and the big flat rock called Pulpit Rock but those two locations required a 3 or 6 hour hike so we couldn't fit them in. Just as well, they are pretty crowded most of the time and it was a bit rainy and foggy for us this day and we did not have hiking shoes.

The Kjerag Rock in Ryfylke area.
Even if we had hiked 6 hours to get to this rock,
I would not have gone out on it to have my picture taken.

Pulpit Rock Preikestolen area.
This would be a 3 hours hike and we may have done it if the weather and time was better.

This was one of many of the pretty sights on the route to Stavanger.

Stavanger has many really great museums but they are only open until 4pm so we chose to visit one, the Norwegian fish cannery from 1880-1930. It was close by and had my interest because on that particular day the wood ovens would be working to smoke the fish. The cannery is only a museum now and it doesn't can the fish anymore. The sardines (brisling) that are caught in the fjords are canned in Poland now.

These are sardines. We got to eat as many as we wanted.

One of the ovens that smoke the fish.

You twist the little fishes off the skewer, hold them by the tail,
and eat them whole, without eating the tail.

There ya go, I like them a lot.

The sardines where sorted by size and packed by hand into cans.

This is a seaming machine to seal up the rectangular cans.
Before this the cans had to be hand soldered.
A skilled solderer would do 500-600 a day but this machine would do 1000 in one hour.
This machine still works and it was demonstrated to us.

This machine would stamp out the metal for the cans and lids.

Cute old town Stavanger.
173 wooden houses built at the end of the 18th century.
Now all these are owned by home owners.

White old town homes and pretty flowers.

Stavanger is another popular spot for cruise ships. Here is the Infinity just pulling out, churning up the waters in the harbor.

These things are gigantic, thousands of tourists flood a city when these pull into a harbor.

This is one of the several private yachts we saw.
Somebody has too much money.

From here on we saw these jelly fish in every harbor, tons of them.

Tons of jelly fish in the waters.

Looking across the harbor, just a very pretty town.

The next day we headed north towards Bergen. In Norway you take a lot of ferry's. This is a nice thing because it gives the driver a break and you get to walk around. This is the ferry leaving the Stavanger area.