Stavanger; Saturday, 20 October, 2012

A nice long lie in, followed by a massive breakfast, and by the time I finally staggered out of the hotel it was the other side of 11am.

First stop of the morning was the Stavanger Museum, and after spending quite some time looking round that I wandered around the corner to the slightly less impressive archaeological museum.

I went for a long walk through the Gamle Stavanger area. A collection of around 150 traditional wooden houses, which was originally destined to be demolished in the late 1940’s, but was saved and now forms a particularly picturesque part of the city.

Buried deep in Gamle Stavanger is a reminder of the areas former working past with the Norwegian Canning museum. It sounds like the kind of niche museum which wouldn’t justify a visit, but with the rain starting to really pelt down I dashed inside and spent a very interesting hour finding out not just about canning fish, but the importance that the fishing industry played in fortunes of Stavanger over the years.

With the weather improving slightly I finished off walking through Gamle Stavanger and then walked back around the edge of the harbour.

Having visited one museum that dealt with fish in oil it was now time to visit a museum that just dealt with the Oil.

With the vast reserves of Oil discovered off the coast of Norway in the 1960’s and early 70’s the country went from being one of the poorest in Europe to the richest and the Norwegian Oil Museum tells the history of that transformation, as well as having several interesting displays on what Oil actually is and how you get it from deep underground to the refineries and eventually cars.

By the time I left the museum it was getting dark and time to look for some dinner, so I had another failed attempt at wandering round town and was considering the £47.50 chicken with Cashew nut before deciding I’d rather just pay £4 for some sausages and be done with it.

Thankfully, breakfast had been so filling that by the time I’d finished the sausage I was feeling quite full.

A bit more of a wander around the town centre at night and then it was back to the hotel and my incredibly comfortable bed.