Stavanger is an old port city on the south west coast of Norway. North Sea oil fields are nearby and account for some of Norway's financial stability. There's a lot of industry here to support the ships on the oil fields. We had been to Bergen (another old port city) and Oslo on another visit many years ago but this time we flew in and out directly.
We stayed at a Havly Best Western near the city port. Kate's conference was out of town a bit at the university. Around the hotel and port it's mostly a pedestrian mall of quaint older buildings with a rabbit warren of lanes to explore. There are some new modern buildings and shopping malls interspersed but most of my pictures are of the wooden buildings - often painted white, often painted in colorful pastels. We were lucky to arrive during a Music Festival so there's quite a few band pictures. On the other side of the port from us is an even older part of town called Gemle and there are mostly white washed homes there.
I did lots of hiking around the town while Kate was at the conference.
One adventure/hike that I went on was to take a ferry to Tau (a short ride away), then a bus and then a strenuous hike over rought terrain up to Pulpit Rock (Preikestolen in Norwegian). It's quite a long hike but a stunning view when you get to the rock. It's a flat square of level rock (approximately 24m or 82ft square) which stands over 600m (1,982ft) straight down to the long narrow fjord below! Some folks would sit on the edge of the rock, or peer over the edge. I couldn't compel myself to get anywhere near the edge. It scared the bejesus out of me! Since then I've found clips on YouTube of people base jumping off the rock with a wing suite and flying down to the fjord below. That scares me even more!
I found the hike up a bit strenuous with the shoes I was wearing. I suspect the poor arch support made it all the more difficult. Some of the KBS conference group went there for the Wednesday afternoon social adventures and I understood that someone twisted their ankle on the hike and had to be carried out -- no fun! For the KBS banquet event we took a boat up the fjord to see Pulpit Rock from below.
There's another famous rock over a fjord to hike to in Norway -- Kjerabolten is a small rock wedged into a crevice some 984m (3,228ft) straight down to the water below! It's a way further north, not near us at all.
The small harbor is often busy with a couple of cruise ships stopping here as a port of call while exploring the fjords. The "Costa Fortuna" (is the sister ship "Costa Lotta"?) is the funniest name I've seen on a boat.
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