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Stavanger, Norway

We arrived in Norway Tuesday night and took a bus from the airport to our hotel. After checking in, we walked across the street to a small grocery store to pick up some snacks to take on our hike the next day. We also needed some dinner, so we found an Italian restaurant that was thankfully still open (it was about 9:15pm and many things were already closed) and ran over there to get a table for 12 - most of the group joined us, though not all. Dinner was excellent and when the restaurant closed at 11 we headed back to our hotel to get some sleep.

Wednesday morning we got up early and took a chartered bus to hike up Preikestolen. The hike is about 5 miles round trip and took us 4.5 hours to complete. The terrain is very rocky and the top is almost 2000 feet above sea level so it is a significant climb up/down. There were many beautiful scenes along our way, but unfortunately the top was very foggy and you could not see the fjord below. On our way back down, we got rained on a bit, so by the time we made it back to our hotel we were all ready for a hot shower and a nap.








In the evening, 2/3 of the group got together for dinner and then walked around town and ended up at McDonald’s for dessert (each country has had some unique McFlurry flavors & we needed to try Norway’s cookies ‘n cream)

Thursday we got to sleep in before meeting up with the group for a zodiac boat tour through Lysefjord. We got to see Preikestolen from the water and get a better idea of just how high up we had been the day before. The zodiac boats were very fun, but also very cold and rather a bumpy ride due to the wind. Thankfully we got very warm jumpsuits to borrow and some waterproof gloves.







After the boat tour, about half of us had lunch at the same Italian restaurant we’d had dinner at Tuesday night and then walked around to do some shopping in town. The whole group gathered back together in the evening to have dinner at Flor & Fjaere. Flor & Fjaere is an island filled with gardens and a restaurant. We took a ferry over from Stavanger, got a tour around the island to hear about its history, and then had dinner in the 2000 sqft greenhouse/restaurant. The dinner is a set 3 courses - fish soup, halibut, and ice cream dessert. Everything was delicious and then we had about an hour and a half to walk around the gardens more before the ferry would take us back to Stavanger. Everywhere you looked it was a stunning view and we were all in awe of what the family that owns the island had created just in the last 60 years.











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