It took us a good day or two to get our bearings and get settled in Stavanger after a long day of travel (basically 24 hours). The transportation plan included having a rental car while we were there to explore the area, then drive up to Bergen to meet the rest of the family and pick them up at the airport before turning the rental car in. It took me only a few tries and annoying of the locals to figure out how to use the endless two lane roundabouts and when to use your turn signal...
Our first adventure to Gamle (Old) Stavanger was relatively close to where we were staying. As I write these posts of our trip, I think it would be a good idea to include some additional factual information from other sources so we can remember more as we look back and read these posts.
"The protected historical area consists largely of restored wooden buildings which were built in the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th century. Gamle Stavanger has grown such that it now covers more than 250 buildings most of which are small, white wooden cottages. The area also includes the Norwegian Canning Museum which displays a typical factory from the 1920s. In the old days, it was quite common to bring your house if you moved from one place to another. This is the case for several of the houses in Old Stavanger. The houses were logged in timber, making it fairly easy to dismantle and bring along when moving."
We parked on the other side of downtown, which was intentional, so we could make the short walk over and see other things, like the pond and church along the way. The wooden buildings and cobblestone streets were very quaint, and it was fun to see that most of the houses were currently lived in and many owners had placed flowers outside their doors. There wasn't much to do there other than to walk through the neighborhood and sightsee, except to enjoy the experience and pretend that you were walking through the small town a few hundred years ago.
At some point the girls went shopping and Jonathan and I decided to take a tour of the Norwegian Canning Museum. I'm really glad that we decided to do that, as it was quite interesting and very well done. The museum is actually an old cannery building itself, and it walked you through the process step by step (including the tools and machines) used to can small fish. The old factory still had several brick ovens and racks they used to cook the fish prior to canning. On our tour we met a family (from Michigan, I recall), who was taking the tour because they believed that one of their grandparents in the past had actually worked there.
The other two pictures are of other areas downtown, but not enough to warrant their own post. The Valberg Tower was built around 1850 and served as a watchtower for both security purposes as well as to alert people in town when there was a fire. The colorful photo is of Fargegaten, which is another set of wooden buildings that have been painted different colors. This was mainly a tourist destination full of restaurants and close to shopping downtown. We went there frequently since it had a nice little coffeehouse with WiFi.
