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May 16, 2008
Stavanger, days 1 and 2
We arrived in Stavanger Wednesday evening and were met by our friends Greg and Karima. They drove us to their apartment which was lovely--a spacious well appointed flat overlooking a fjord. As some of you may remember, the last time we saw our favorite couple was at their wedding in Trinidad about a year ago so we had a lot to catch up on.
The next morning, Karima dropped us off in the central part of Stavanger--we walked through Old Town Stavanger which was filled with white-washed wooden homes nestled among cobblestone streets. Even though it's the fourth largest city in Norway, Stavanger is a pretty small city though not without its charms. We grabbed lunch at an inexpensive Thai restaurant which was across the street from the Norwegian Petroleum Museum and a pretty cool oil-themed playground. By the early afternoon we had seen much of Stavanger and decided to walk back to Karima and Greg's apartment. The walk was long but winded through a picturesque cemetery.
Greg had purchased tickets to for one of the many Stavanger International Jazz Festival concerts that were taking place and we met up with some of Greg's colleagues at a bar overlooking the harbor beforehand. One of his colleagues mentioned he had gone skiing the other weekend and that it was so warm that some women skiied in bikinis (I'm sure an image enjoyed by many males). We then walked over to the concert venue--the featured artist was Natacha Atlas, a Middle-Eastern influenced artist who is also a bellydancer. It was our first time seeing a concert overseas and it was interesting to see the high turn-out of Norwegians that came out to see her perform.
You'll have to excuse some of the pinkish hues in some of the photos--my camera started having some problems at this point.
View from Greg and Karima's apartment
Some Stavanger photos
Posted by Jennifer at May 16, 2008 08:56 AM