Haugesund; Thursday, 29 May, 2025

The hotel had signs up in both the lifts showing breakfast times and highlighting that the period after 08:30 was the quietest. Clearly everyone had seen that and decided to delay breakfast until after 08:30 as when I got down it was already busy and only got busier until there was a queue of people waiting for tables by the time I’d finished and was heading back to my room.

I headed out of the hotel to go for a wander around the city, taking in the parts of the mainland side of the city that I hadn’t see the previous day, including heading down to the city hall and the square and park that surround it.

I then headed over towards the town church, but it turns out that today is the feast of Ascension, so the church had services on and was closed to visitors, so instead I carried on wandering the city including visiting the Byparken and nearby the statue of Harold I Fairhair, and the sculptor really had made an effort to highlight that final part of his name as it looked like he was mid-shot of a shampoo commercial.

I had a bit more of a wander before heading back to the hotel to partake in Fika, which turned out to be a good move as pretty soon after I got back to the hotel the weather started to deteriorate first into a steady drizzle and then into pretty heavy rain.

In the end I didn’t leave the hotel again, after Fika I headed up to my room to read a book and then headed down for an early dinner in the hope that there might be a gap in the rain, but there wasn’t so after dinner I stayed in my room, reading and watching the rain pounding down on the fishing boats preparing to head out for the night before turning in for an early night.