For the second time on these two cruises we enjoyed a most excellent day. Following our customary Lido breakfast, we disembarked the ship in Stavanger around 9am and found our way to one of the local souvenir shops where we located our customary city magnet and confirmed the location of our bus pickup for our 450 krone Viking tour. The dock is right in the center of town which makes walking to a number of attractions quite easy.
Just before 10am we boarded the very colorfully decorated Viking Tour bus with 20 other guests. Camille, our tour guide, who was actually from Colombia but met a Norwegian fellow and moved here, introduced us to the tour concept. She was dressed in replica Viking clothing. It turned out that this was a brand new tour and we were the very first group to take it. Our guide then fave us a history of the Vikings and my big takeaway was that Viking is actually a verb meaning to go long distances. Also Vikings never wore helmets with horns on them. In fact only one Viking helmet has ever been found. For the rest of Viking history, I'll let the reader research that independently and not bore you here.
We also learned that Bluetooth is a Viking term and again I'll let you research the background on that.
Our first stop was at a memorial to the Vikings which was a replica to the 3 swords stuck in a rock and located elsewhere in Norway. Here we had the opportunity to don replica Viking helmets. We learned a bit more history before heading on to a very old church and a Stone Henge type monument. Our last stop was at a reconstructed Iron Age farm (pre-Vikings) where we got to go in a long house with stone walls and a sod roof. A lady dressed in period costume explained the history of the farm. Our Viking bus then dropped us back at the pier just in time for our 2pm catamaran ride with 200 of our closest friends out to Pulpit Rock.
The ride was fast and extremely scenic. Near Pulpit Rock we docked for a 'snack' of waffles, sour cream and jelly and tea. It was yummy especially since we hadn't eaten lunch. Our turnaround point was at a spectacular waterfall named Hengjanefossen. The captain pulled up the boat right in front the waterfall so close the passengers in front got splashed. Seeing the rock from the underside was spectacular and we could even see people dangling their legs over the edge. Scary stuff. There were also some goats along the way in their summer pasture and a very lonely mailbox that one would have to rappel down a cliff to retrieve any mail! We returned to the ship with 10 minutes to spare but there was at least one group still behind us.
As soon as that group was on board, we departed with the customary toots of the horn. Thus area is the heart of Norway's sea oil drilling industry and we saw lots of boats devoted to that support as oil prices are low so drilling activity is reduced.
We ate a quick Lido Marketplace dinner before listening to Rogerio Tutti, a Brazilian classical pianist who was good. We then participated in and won the game show 'Majority Rules' along with Anneken & Harlan and Dennis & Judy. After that show, we chatted with them for an hour until the BBC game show was on with our friend Keith as a participant. His team won a dinner in the Culinary Arts restaurant. We capped the evening off watching the wonderful Robert Deniro/Anne Hathaway movie, The Intern.
I learned today from our show host, Saul, that the ship is fully booked at 2,600 on this cruise and that there are over 1,000 Dutch passengers on board. The atmosphere on board really changed when we left Amsterdam! Some good and some not so good.
Yes it was wonderful day, but my wife reminded me we have only 4 more sleeps until the end of the cruise.
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