Between visiting museums – we’d just left the Norwegian Printing and Canning Museums – we walked through the historic area of the Norwegian port of Stavanger; the old town, or Gamle Stavanger. We’d explored this popular tourist spot when we’d taken our first cruise to Norway back in 2013 – see: Norway’s Oldest Cathedral And The Old Wooden Town Of Gamle Stavanger – so there wasn’t anything new to see, per se, but we enjoyed the decade-old blast of nostalgia that wandering the streets brought with it.
Gamle Stavanager was almost demolished in the 1950s but the city architect decided to clean up and restore the by-then near-derelict buildings, and many generations of cruisers would like to thank him for this decision. It’s a very attractive location in an otherwise fairly industrialised city as you can see for yourself below.
In case you’re wondering whether I took another photo of our cruise ship from the same place I’d already taken a photo of our cruise ship, Britannia, when wandering through Gamle Stavanger earlier in the day, then I’m happy to report that of course I did.
As we reached the end of Gamle Stavanger, getting close to our next intended destination, we came across a sculpture, marker stone, and a little bit of street art commemorating the Norwegian philosopher, scientist, and poet, Henrik Steffens, who was born in the city in 1773.
In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be taking a look around the third of the museums we visited in Stavanger, the Maritime Museum.