Stavanger is the third largest city in Norway. The economy is based around oil exports, and is conveniently located on the south western tip of the country which makes for a great sea port and easy air travel. It’s also a great jumping point for several great hikes. You can take a ferry from Fiskepiren to Tau and hike up to Pulpit Rock, or you can take a ferry up the Lysefjord and experience Kjerag. The cost of goods and services in Norway is noticeably higher than the US, so keep this in mind when planning a visit. We stayed in Hundvag for two nights, which allowed us easy bus transport to and from the city center. Our final night was spent near airport in order to save time in the morning before leaving for Greece.
It’s a quaint city. It has all of the amenities of a large city at the fraction of the size. The city center is easily accessible by bus and offers a beautiful shopping experience. I say experience because our budget was extremely limited, so we did a lot of looking. Shops close early all week, and it’s impossible to find do any kind of sight seeing and make it home in time to shop at a souvenir store. Kim was not pleased, but the airport gift shop was good enough. It was also raining the entire evening we spent walking around. The streets through the shops are brick, and the buildings look like more like houses than shops. There is a lot of street art throughout the town which gives it an unexpected urban feel.
Trying to find a restaurant that was enough somewhat affordable proved challenging. We landed on Al-Forno, which is an Italian restaurant that has some reasonably priced pizza. It was about $40 for us to split one pizza, and additional $10 for one beer. I wasn’t going to spring for the beer, but I didn’t want to pass up the experience of drinking a local brew. (Spoilers, I don’t remember what it was, just that I paid too much for it). The pizza was, in fact, delicious.
Our last evening in town, we searched out some local chocolate from Sjokoladepiken. I’m pretty sure the name is made up. They had a wide variety of chocolates and desserts. The service was less than outstanding (possibly due to language barriers) but the treats were enjoyable. It certainly beat the extremely disappointing not-kit-kat bars. For dinner, we landed inside an awesome deli with bread that was baked daily. They had plenty of vegetarian options for Kim and meat options for everyone else. It’s priced by weight, so you aren’t forced to spend more than you’re planning. Unfortunately my notes from the trip were lost with my phone on our return trip, but I’ll update the post if I can figure out what the restaurant was. As they were getting ready to close, they offered us as much free bakery items as we wanted since they were going to be pitched. This was a blessing because we were trying to save money and it basically gave us breakfast for the next day.
We had a bit of an experience trying to find our last night’s stay. A GPS will only take you so far through an apartment complex, and if the apartment is located behind the last road, it’s nearly impossible to see. Luckily we were able to get out and find it. It wasn’t an awful stay but our host was Indian and was skyping on speakerphone while we were getting ready for bed. Thankfully we were only there for 4-5 hours before leaving for our early flight to Athens.