a fabulous weekend of food and site seeing began with a quick wonder round the city centre (still under considerable preparation for european city of culture 2008) while it was dry, before heading for dinner at craigs or craigs which set us up well for an early start saturday morning. The first stop was at the little known fluberget, a magnificent set of 170 figures carved and painted on the cliff on the edge of Harfrsfjord just outside the city centre - "found" in 1879 but dating from the bronze age it consists of a mixture impressions of boats and people and a pair of musical instruments were even found here - "lures", as it turns out theres heaps of these sites all over rogland, the best finds of which can be seen at the stavanger archeological museum including the lures and wonderfully discussed in the "from runes to rigs" book (ISBN: 8299365236). We quickly stopped off at the very tall 3 swords on the eastern edge of Hafrsfjord where norway was united from chiefdoms to a kingdom all those years ago...across to sandnes for coffee via the stavanger glass blowers where several snowmen were purchaised
although the weather was still rather wet in full gortex we worked up our apetite for afternoon lefse with a walk round njåskogen (a very good place for mushrooms apparently!) before heading down to Hå gamle prestegård - the old vicarige on the coast, some rather special ceramic exhibits with strong inspiration drawn from the old viking burial spots aswell photographic and painting exhibitions.
by this time it was definitely time for a snooze before a party dinner at bolgen and moi in the prestigeous oil museum, mosre stunning food as well as a very designer table layout!
sunday morning we jumped onto the ferry across to tau to påay a visit to the beautiful glass cellar where a few angels joined the car full on the way to solbakk - a further bronze age rock carving site, which also offers some good bird spotting opportunity - the ubiquitous coffee was had at the lysefjordsenter where unfortunately the exhibition is no longer open
quite a cultural and culinary experience dispite a jolly good helping of wet weather....here's a couple more links to whet the appetite for more
stavanger museums main page
the intriguing broken column of antony gormley with a comprehensive set of photos
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