This past weekend we traveled to meet our UBC friend Petter in his hometown of Stavanger, Norway. We flew there on thursday evening on a comfortable yet sassy airline, SAS... the Scandinavian airline with great youth ticket deals (which we figured out courtesy of Petter!)
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| downtown Stavanger |
We toured around Stavanger on friday morning and met his wonderful and hospitable family. We felt really comfortable and right at home here and loved the local prawns that are caught over night and then cooked in fresh sea salt water the next morning. The port was bustling with a lot of tourists because of the HUGE cruise ship that was docked right in the tiny harbour on friday. There were many cute little cafes and shops we saw as well, and Sydney picked up an authentic norwegian wool sweater. We were also really surprised to find a country in Europe more expensive than Denmark...
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| Stavanger Harbour |
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| Petter being an excellent tour guide around town! |
Petter of course had a busy itinerary planned for our weekend, so after a full tour of Stavanger we packed up and drove south to his summer house on Hille Island near the small coastal town of Mandal. Once we arrived in Mandal, we loaded everything up onto their motorboat and took a lovely scenic 20 minute ride to the island where their house was.
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| the Sorli's house from the water |
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| rocky shore line reminded us of the westcoast and gulf islands |
Petter and his brother Jorgen had some Norwegian friends that arrived later that evening to take part in the weekend festivities. All their names were difficult for us to pronounce, so they kindly created North-American friendly nicknames for us to call them by all weekend. This was embarrassing because they could all switch so easily between English and Norwegian, and we could barely pronounce any of their names in their native language. If you Canadians are looking for a challenge, try pronouncing: Asbjorn, Jan Egil, Kjetil, Aleksander and Jorgen. (hint kj- sounds like shhhhh...)
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| arrival time at the summer house |
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| Rose getting a cooking lesson from Jorgen on Norwegian tacos |
The weekend weather was mostly overcast (to Petter's dismay) but warm enough to relax and explore outside. The festivities included: croquet, cards, boating, late night fishing, swimming, wake boarding (not us obviously), eating and helping the boys grocery shop. On the first day we were brave enough to go for a morning swim, but after seeing all the jellyfish and massive swans, we decided we'd had enough swimming for one weekend.
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| treacherous orange jellyfish |
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| demon "big-ass" swan... |
We made some really nice dinners out on the bbq and drove into Mandal for the Euro Cup final game between Spain and Italy on our last night.
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| gourmet meal of (big-ass) steaks and salad |
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| beautiful harbour of Mandal |
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| on a boat! |
Staying up late in Norway is easy when it's only dark a couple hours a night! Good thing we had multiple decks of cards and an endless supply of Norwegian drinking games.
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| late night festivities |
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| what time do you think it is? |
It was an amazing weekend and we were so happy to have made so many new, interesting and entertaining Norwegian friends. We hope we can celebrate every Canada Day long weekend like this. Thanks again to the Sorli family for everything!
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| the gang! |
Wish you were here,
Sydney and Rose
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