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Tuesday 30th May
Weather: Overcast but dry
Seas: As flat as a pancake!
We awoke this morning and we’d arrived in Norway. Stavanger was our first port of call. We had breakfast in the MDR and then headed off the ship to explore Stavanger. Antony Gormley has several statues dotted around the city forming Broken Columns – to show the varying elevation in Stavanger. When stacked on top of each other, the would form a complete column.
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We wandered around the harbour, following the waters edge until we hit the Norwegian Petroleum Museum – Dad would have loved this place – as would Ray, having worked in the North Sea on the Uncle John for numerous years.
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The museum was packed with models of oil rigs and sea vessels. The part Callum loved the most was the escape chute – the way the workers evacuate an oil rig. He was painfully slow at first but soon got the hang of it.
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There was also a memorial to the Piper Alpha and the Alexander L Kielland disasters which claimed many lives.
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Jon was really chuffed to see there was a Stadive vessel in the exhibit similar to the Uncle John his Dad captained in the North Sea. Really cool to see what this looked like.
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Lots of information to absorb. There’s a worksheet for the kids to complete to work out various facts and once completed, you can trade your pencil in for a rock. Pretty cool.
Museum tour completed and the cafe wasn’t open for a drink. We headed back towards the main part of the town and found a little coffee shop (free wifi!!). We wandered around the market and the shops for a little while longer. Callum was getting bored so he went back onto the ship with Granny whilst Jon and I wandered around the Old Town (Gamle Stan) of Stavanger – the pretty wooden white buildings next to where we’d docked. After a bit we dropped down by the very impressive concert hall and headed back to the ship. A quick drink up on deck before heading to collect Callum and Mum from her cabin before a quick afternoon tea.
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Tonight we were eating in Sindhu – Atul Kocchar’s restaurant onboard. Bit nervous as Mum has never really had Indian food before but was willing to give it a go. We explained Sindhu was more spice and flavour combinations rather than hot-spicy. No way was Callum going to miss out!
First off, pre-dinner drinks in The Glass House (at the bar!) and then off to Sindhu!
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Sindhu is a specialty restaurant so you pay a £20/head surcharge. Service, as always, was exemplary. A couple of surprises throughout the food journey. Mum was very impressed with the lobster main (Callum and I also had this!) … especially as no lobster on the formal night menus.
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After dinner we headed down to Brodies for the quiz … only to find karaoke was in full flow. Mum bailed after listening to a couple of songs, but we found a seat and Callum really enjoyed singing along to the songs – we were surprised he knew the words to some of the “old” songs. In fairness, most were pretty good singers. Hats off to the guy that was singing along to ?? – the auto cue failed but sang the entire song, word perfect throughout.
Obviously no quiz was going to happen so we headed off to bed … Callum sneaking into Granny’s cabin really quietly!
