Stavanger

For a brief moment I'm transported to the Caribbean, Hot pink, canary yellow, royal purple, seafoam green; a veritable rainbow surrounds us in the pedestrian friendly shopping streets of Gamle Stavanger, or Old Town, in stark contrast to the streets on the opposite side of the port where little white-clad cottages fly the Norwegian flag. The Stavanger Cathedral or Domkirke dates back to 1125 and backs onto a man-made lagoon within a nice city park.

It's third largest city, Stavanger is known as the Oil Capital of Norway. Once again we marvel at the thriving yet traditional feel of the city, just as we have in every place we've stopped at over the past couple of weeks. We spend a few hours walking about town and then head to the port to board a tourist ferry for three hour cruise of Lysefjord. Having been to so many fjords in the last few days this is one excursion we could have passed on; we seem to spend an inordinate amount of time staring at a hole on the rocky cliff known as Vagabond's Cave and some more time looking up at Pulpit Rock, recently made famous in Tom Cruise's latest cliff-hanger, Mission Impossible 6. From below Pulpit Rock is quite dramatic, an almost perfect square box jutting out from the top of the cliff; but the real excitement is at the top, 350 metres up, which daring souls get to after a six kilometre hike. In all honesty we were just tired and hungry; the cruise was actually really nice, the ferry super new, clean, comfortable and the scenery striking.