9 x Travel tips in and around Stavanger

What to do in Stavanger during your urban city break? Pure! Food & Travel visited Stavanger for three days and checked out these tips with cultural sight seeings, a fjord cruise, a road trip, food (of course) and many more tips in and around Stavanger!

1. Gamle Stavanger

Walk to Gamle Stavanger: a beautiful neighbourhood on the west side of the harbour, with little wooden houses and cobbled streets. It is the largest surviving wooden settlement in Northern Europe.

2. The Norwegian Canning Museum

Visit the sardine canning museum in Gamle Stavanger. The museum is located on on the old premises of the former canning factory. Take the guided tour and you will learn everything there is to know about the hard work in the former factories. Before the discovery of oil in the North Sea (1969), fish, and specifically sardines, used to be the biggest source of income.

The main aim of the exhibits in the canning museum is to show the work that had to be done in a canning factory. From the arrival of the fish at the factory until it was ready for consumption at a kitchen table anywhere in the world. Did you know that the most important difference between the French and Portuguese sardines on the one hand and Norwegian sardines on the other is that the Norwegian sardines are smoked?

museumstavanger.no

3. Fjord cruise

Take a nature trip! Enjoy a fjord cruise in the 42 kilometer long Lysefjord to Preikestolen, also known as the pulpit rock. It is one of the best known tourist attractions in Norway. The top of the cliff is 25 by 25 meters square and almost flat, the cliff is 604 meters above the fjord. The rock formation was formed during the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago. The cruise also stops near the spectacular waterfall where pure, fresh mountain water plummets down 400 meters into the fjord.

If you want a bit more of a challenge in reaching Preikestolen you can take the two hour hiking and enjoy the cruise later.

4. Pure! restaurants in Stavanger

Check out these five great restaurants to enjoy local and delicious food.

5. Gladmat food festival

Visit Stavanger during Gladmat, the biggest food festival of Scandinavia.

6. Road trip

Plan a road trip to the Rennesøy islands. In Judaberg (Finnøy) you will find 25 greenhouses which produce 25% of all the tomatoes in Norway. I visited the greenhouse growing the most delicious sweet tomatoes, named Juanita.

On a guided tour at Lauvsnes Gartneri I learned all about growing tomatoes. After eight weeks the tomatoes are ready to harvest. They pick them two or three times per week and the tomato plants grow up to three to four meters. There’s even a tomato festival.

I drove back in the direction of Stavanger to the south. I enjoyed a quick lunch stop at Sogndalsstrand Kulturhotell.

You can also stay for the night at one of the 30 rooms, located in twelve different wooden houses.

On my trip I spotted the oldest wooden houses at the beach in Jøssingfjord/Helleren.

And I found a beach at Kvassheim that was especially created for the cows to have fun ; )

sogndalstrand-kulturhotell.no

7. Street art

Are you a lover of street art? Visit Stavanger during the NuArt festival the first week of September. If you cant make the time there is enough street art to spot around the city on any other day.

8. Organic breakfast and fairtrade coffee

Stay at Scandic Stavanger City. The hotel opened last year so everything is still fresh and new. Great beds and an excellent breakfast. Some food is organic and the coffee is fairtrade. The breakfast area might be crowded at peak time.

scandichotels.com/StavangerCity

9. Renewable energy

Visit the petroleum museum. Not because we love oil so much, but because they also give attention to the future of green and renewable energy.

norskolje.museum.no

Hope you will enjoy Stavanger for your next urban city break. More info? Check visitnorway.com and regionstavanger.com.

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