Hiking Trip Part 5

After some adventurous and rather hard hikes through the rough nature here in Norway, we figured we could use a "day off" and went to Stavanger, one of the bigger cities here, in fact it holds the 4th place with ca. 127.000 inhabitants. One of our main goals there was to visit the Oil Museum, which was our first stop just after arriving in the city. Before getting there though, we had to get on a ferry first...

A typical sight when you travel by ferry... fjords all around

This is what a ferry's "interior" looks like...

Oil Museum

The Oil Museum from outside... as you can see, it lies just in the open harbor of Stavanger, also one of the city's famous sights

This is part of a British/Norwegian joint operation oil rig... now standing just outside the museum's main entrance...

Leaving Britain...

Leaving Norway...

First sight after entering the museum: the world's biggest drill bit!!

An illustration showing some of the countries with natural oil and gas reserves...

And one of my favourites... some sand from the Norwegian desert that existed thousands of years before ;)

Norway's big bad boys... the biggest oil rigs out there: "Troll", "Ekofisk" and "Statfjord"

A one-man modern diving capsule! The business of oil drilling is tied closely to underwater exploration, diving and repair missions on the ocean ground...

A rescue capsule from one of the oil rigs. I think its made for 25 to 27 people...

And these are the suits you have to wear when you go out to sea to work on one of the "giants"

Nice details about the hunger of the crews ;)

A drill operator's working place... you can even try to control the drill yourself, but like many installations, this was not working properly...

Rescue boat! If something goes wrong, be sure to hop fast on it...

AND FINALLY... some videogames! Too bad this game was awfully hard, I kept dying after lousy 30 seconds...

A view from the top of the museum towards the harbor...

And one of the last parts of the museum, dedicated to the divers and underwater workers... this device was actually pretty fun. When putting your head inside one of the diving helmets, you could talk to people on the other helmets, but with "diver's voice" - which sounds like helium or chipmunks. This is due to long transmission distances and interference in the ocean, so they have to use strange frequencies... :)

Stavanger City

After the museum, we went strolling around the city, looking through shops and points of interests. Best thing: We found a nice fast food restaurant which sold thermo-cups including one free fill of coffee for just 20 NOK!!! Now we can get refills for just 10 kr in every other "Big Bite" restaurant around Norway - good thing the one in Stavanger was the only one I saw until now :D

Street Art Stavanger

A part of the huge open harbor

More Street Art... same street as the graffiti above. Seemed like some kind of fancy cultural street...

Wooden houses in colorful variety. Also notice the ad on the blackboard in the lower right...

I guess this is somewhat like "Main Plaza"

View towards another part of the harbor, and the seaside monument

Old Town Stavanger... cute little streets, cute little houses

Another view of one of the places in the Old Town

So much for Stavanger, next stop would have been another camping site, but we were sent away because it was raining too much and we werent allowed to build up our tents anymore. So we had to look for a hut rather spontaneously. Good thing we found one, and a very nice one, too... up next: the last evening and the last day of the trip!!!