Stavanger, Norway

Once again we had a rough night’s sailing. When we awoke in the morning, Tracey wasn’t feeling too good so she took some sea sickness tablets and went back to bed while I went up the The View to eat breakfast by myself. This was all fine because we didn’t arrive at our first port-of-call, Stavanger, until lunchtime. By then, Tracey was feeling much better and up for lunch, after which we headed ashore…

I must confess, first impressions were of mild indifference. It was a nice enough place, and clearly very popular on the weekend, since it was heaving with visitors, but there wasn’t a lot there to really grab our attention; it didn’t feel very ‘Norway’.

Leaving the quayside, one of the first places cruise ship visitors see is the Old Town…

…which we quite liked. It wasn’t too busy here, and the old wooden buildings were interesting to look at.

We also rather liked this artwork on one of the buildings by the harbourside…

The main harbour town of Stavanger was busy, though – very touristy, in fact.

In the end, we consulted Maps.Me and headed out from the main centre of the town towards Vålandstårnet; a tower on a hill. When we got there, we planned to grab some food in the cafe in its downstairs, but the whole building appeared to be in the process of being used as some sort of filming location, and we were told that the cafe was private today.

No worries. We enjoyed the views for a while before heading back through the town towards the ship. Stavanger underwhelmed us; tomorrow we will be visiting Eidfjord, which is a place we’ve been to before, so we know what to expect, and we have high hopes for it