Cruising Geocachers
Stavanger – 7th June
Stavanger has a port, beautiful historic streets, museums, cafes and sea activities, everything that makes an ideal destination for cruise ships. Today there were two cruise liners in port, the Aida Perla 4,350 guests, 900 crew and the smaller but more luxurious Silver Dawn 596 guests, 411 crew. Based on people and staff ratio I like the sound of the second one but not the price.
As the sun was shining I thought geocaching in the picturesque streets of 18th century houses might be a nightmare however the tourists off the boats were so pleasant and polite. They didn’t hop in your photo shot; they waited patiently and did the same when they wanted to take a photo. They didn’t linger, they weren’t obtrusive, they were quiet, respectful people. Not too quiet though as I heard a couple discussing the whereabouts of a cache that they couldn’t find (as it was in Roger’s hand). They were German and off the Aida for the morning hunting out caches. We shared the cache, their find count exceeds 15,000, ours 1500, obviously we need to start going on cruises. The photos are of the houses in the historic streets of Gamle Stavanger.
Unfortunately the 12th century church with 17th-20th additions was yet again being renovated so it was a quick visit via the tourist stalls. I managed to avoid buying any souvenirs until the end of our visit and ducked into a shop to purchase a tea towel. It features in the photo with a can of sardines, something else Stavanger is famous for, they once had 70 sardine canneries.
The sardine factories have been replaced by a sardine museum, shrimp boats and tourist ships. The cost of living in Stavanger is not only high due to the tourists but because Stavanger is the oil and energy capital of Norway. All those oil employees earn the big dollars and have a high disposal income meaning that they can afford to eat at one of the 5 restaurants that have a Michelin star and we can’t. We dined at a small café and had open sandwiches NZ$14.85 each, Salmon and shrimp and cold crumbed fish (weird) shrimp and caviar.
There is a fish market in town with its own expensive restaurant, but if you are after a bargain you can purchase shrimp straight off the boat. Well it’s not really straight of the boat; most of the shrimp had been cooked and was sold chilled by the scoopful.
These photos are of colourful Fargegaten Street where the buildings have been painted pastel shades and an artist has added extra colour.
Last photo is of the 1850 Valberg Tower, it is the watchmen’s tower where he looked down over the city looking for any fires. Two men took shifts to man the tower and another 4 took turns to walk the town streets below. No watchmen today, just some crazy geocacher fulfilling her cache obligations.
Today’s ABBA tribute is ‘I’m a Marionette’ (1978), for all the ‘virtual’ (that’s a cache type) geocache loggers and other travellers who rush to the scenic spots, smile, take the obligatory photo and rush off to the next destination.
“Look this way, just a little smile, ” is what they say
“You look better on the photograph if you laugh, that’s okay”
For all those followers wanting to know why there are no photos of us at Pulpit Rock, we aren’t that silly. Hundreds of people go there a day, some don’t come back. There was a fatality at the rock a couple of days ago, they closed the climb for 2 hours, removed the body and carried on.