Subtitle: I spent 4 days in Stavanger, Norway, on the south west coast of the country. I was there from May 17-21, 2015.

Other pages from the Norway trip: 000-DSC_7482-header: The Flight to London-Heathrow 000-DSC_7482-headertext: I flew from Ithaca to Newark, Newark to London, then London to Stavanger. We landed to the west at Heathrow (I don't recall if it was Runway 27R or 27L), flying over the River Thames, and getting a good view of downtown London, including the London Eye, Parliament, and the phallic Swiss Re building in business center. I was using my regular 50mm lens and the pictures came out surprisingly well. We were probably around 2000-3000 feet up at the time. 000-DSC_7482: Approaching London, a bit east of it. 001-DSC_7486: The Tower Bridge is the right-most bridge, and the Swiss Re buidling is visible as the blue-gray candy-cane striped phallus on the right side of the cluser of buildings a little to the left and above the bridge. 002-DSC_7487: The Millennium bridge (footbridge) is visible as the fourth bridge from the right, with the smokestack from the Tate Modern (art musuem) at the south end (below it) and the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral visible a little to the north of it. To the west is the London Eye (Ferris wheel) just west of the Hungerford Bridge. 003-DSC_7488: Across from the London Eye is Buckingham Palace and Big Ben. 004-DSC_7489: 005-DSC_7490: 006-DSC_7491: Looking east back towards London. Thinking about it, since we were heading north for a bit, we were probably being vectored towards Runway 27 Right. 007-DSC_7493-header: National Day in Stavanger, Norway 007-DSC_7493-headertext: I arrived in Stavanger, Norway on May 17, which is National Day in Norway. By the time I got to the hotel, it was around 4pm and I had missed most of the National Day activities. People from the Honeynet Workshop were gathering at the House of Fingerfood somewhere in downtown Stavanger, so I figured I'd go there.

I hadn't really put much thought into the fact that I'm pretty poor at navigating, I wasn't really sure exactly where I was going, I hadn't slept on the red-eye flight and it was now about 11pm for me, so I had been running on no sleep for about a day and a half. Also, apparently in the older section of Stavanger, street signs do not appear frequently. Also, it was cold and rainy. I had a map, but I was short on clues.

I did manage to find the restaurant eventually, and the timing wasn't bad, as dinner was going to start in a few minutes, and I saw a National Day parade with lots of people, dressed in traditional Norwegian costumes, with lots of Norway flags. So it was a bit of an adventure, in a good way. 007-DSC_7493: It was cold and rainy during the parade. 008-DSC_7496: 009-DSC_7497: 010-DSC_7503: A marching band and Norwegian flags. 011-DSC_7506: More bands, more flags, but parade watchers in traditional dress. 012-DSC_7507: More traditional costumes. 013-DSC_7508: More flags. 014-DSC_7509: Costume and flag. 015-DSC_7510: Costumes and flags. 016-DSC_7511: Flags and costumes. 017-DSC_7512-header: City Centre in Stavanger 017-DSC_7512-headertext: The parade was in Old Stavanger (Gamle Stavanger), with narrow streets and old buildings. I was trying to find the restaurant but got distracted by the parade. It was hard to find streets that were labeled or ones that appeared on the hotel map I had. After much wandering, I found a landmark and was able to orient myself and get to the restaurant. Afterwards I wandered around Old Stavanger a little before heading back to the hotel. I was quite tired by that point. 017-DSC_7512: The House of Fingerfood. It was a nice venue with good food (it might be primarily catering, but it was a nice space for a meet-and-greet for the group). 018-DSC_7513: Valberg Tower (Valbergtårnet), an old watchtower at the top of a hill, the highest point in town. Now a museum. 019-DSC_7516: Cannons by the base of the Valberg tower. 020-DSC_7517: The cannons overlook the city and the waterfront area. Nice defensive position. 021-DSC_7519: My shadow on the building. 022-DSC_7520: 023-DSC_7521: Looking down the road to the harbor. 024-DSC_7523: I thought this was just some sort of stylized sculpture of a Nordic Rune. Turns out it was a bit tricky to find out what this sculpture was, but my friend Brendan was able to track this down. It's called Soltreet, created by Arne Vinje Gunnerud in 1984. In 2011, it was hit by a truck and broken in two. After three years, it was supposed to be repaired, but as of May 2015, it had not. 025-DSC_7524: A side view of the Stavanger Cathedral, with the Soltreet sculpture next to it. The cathedral is a landmark. 026-DSC_7525: The side of the cathedral with some tulips in the foreground and a sculpture in front of the cathedral. The sculpture is part of the Broken Column work from 2003 which consists of 23 statues of figures placed around the city of Stavanger. 027-DSC_7526: Stavanger Cathedral (Stavanger domkirke). Built from around 1100 - 1125, (1125 is considered the year the city was founded). It was under some rennovation. 028-DSC_7527: The gazebo in the city park, surrounding the lake Breiavatnet 029-DSC_7528: Stonework on the gazebo (a squirrel-monkey?) 030-DSC_7529: More gazebo stonework (an owl) 031-DSC_7530: Houses on Lake Breiavatnet catching evening sunlight. 032-DSC_7531: 033-DSC_7536-header: By the Clarion Energy Hotel and Lake Stokkavatnet 033-DSC_7536-headertext: I had switched over to Norwegian time pretty easily, aided by not sleeping for the flight over. But for some reason, I got a little confused on Tuesday, woke up at 5am and didn't realize how early it was (there was no clock in the hotel room, and I figured the front desk just forgot my wake-up call) and figured since no one was at breakfast I'd just go for a walk to a park and lake across the street from the hotel. I was surprised the sun was so low on the horizon since it should have been up for a few hours already, yet never thought that perhaps, just maybe, it wasn't the world that was screwy, but maybe I was just a bit messed up timezone-wise. Anyway, it did allow me to walk around Lake Stokkavatnet. 033-DSC_7536: Monday night, there was a nice rainbow visible from my hotel window. I saw it and then needed to change my camera lens. By the time I had it set up 1-2 minutes later, the rainbow had faded considerably. 034-DSC_7538: A grassy field with a trail (and exercise station in the center of the picture) and Lake Stokkavatnet in the background. 035-DSC_7541: The path winds by people's houses. I had no idea how early it was and didn't really think much about why there was almost no activity in any of the houses. 035-stokkavatnet_Panorama: A mini panoramic shot of the path winding through houses in the area. 035a-DSC_7547: I found a boat tied up just beyond the shore. 035a-DSC_7549: The sign with random Norwegian graffiti was glowing in the low angle of the morning sun. I thought it looked cool, though I was baffled that the sun was so low even though it should have been up for a couple hours already. I figured they just probably do things differently in Norway... I don't think I was fully awake enough to figure out that it was like 5 o'clock in the morning instead of 7. 035a-DSC_7550-header: Madlabekken Park 035a-DSC_7550-headertext: Madlabekken Park was about a 10 minute walk from the hotel (east instead of north). It's a smaller lake but had a nice park. Also, here at 5pm, there were more people than at 5am at Stokkavatnet. 035a-DSC_7550: Lake Madlabekken with Norwegian mountains in the distance. 035a-DSC_7551: A cute little hut and pond. Everything in Norway must either be strikingly beautiful or cute. 035a-DSC_7552: Another shot of the little hut with the lake beyond it. 035a-DSC_7554: Swan-butt. It was in that pose for around 30 seconds to a minute, as I was fiddling around with my camera. I even thought it might be possible that it had died in that pose. 035a-DSC_7555: But no, the swan was fine. It came up for air and then shortly after that, went back into his mooning pose. 035a-DSC_7558: It was odd the way the straight line of trees all have branches that grow out then up. I don't know enough about trees to know if that's perfectly normal or an indication of some odd activity, possibly trolls. 035a-DSC_7565: I think this was some sort of art thing. [Update] Someone I met in Stavanger had this to add: This is "tuttetreet", or the "pacifier tree". It's a local tradition to help kids quit using their pacifier by having them "give it" to this tree for years.
It was cut down by someone one night in 2010, but the pacifiers were quickly moved to an adjacent tree by the locals. 035a-DSC_7566: The trees had many, many pacifiers on them. I blame art. See previous picture. 035a-DSC_7568: Pretty pink flowers on the trees. I turned back here, because the group was meeting for dinner and I didn't want to have to repeat my navigational folly from Sunday night. 035b-madlabekken_Panorama: A panoramic shot of the Madlabekken lake from one of the clearings on the path. I was standing on a picnic table to take this. 035m-DSC_7569-header: The Vju Restaurant and Skybar 035m-DSC_7569-headertext: On Wednesday, the Honeynet Conference organizers reserved a restaurant at the top of the tallest building in town for us. It was a 10 minute walk from the hotel. It was called Vju (pronounced "view") and was an appropriate name, as it had a great view of Stavanger. I took some pictures of the area. Also, someone at the conference had a 50mm f1.4 lens that I borrowed to take a few very narrow depth-of-field pictures of the desserts. He said that he had taken quote a few pictures of "food porn" when he first got the lens. 035m-DSC_7569: Getting into the glass elevator to ride up to the 23rd floor. 035m-DSC_7596: A line of desserts. 035m-DSC_7598: 035m-DSC_7599: A bowl of berries (which were kind of frozen). 035m-DSC_7600: Colorful desserts (actually, kind of jello-like). 035m-DSC_7601: A flan-like dessert. 035m-DSC_7611: A sunset picture from the Skylounge. 036-DSC_7589: Frank with Stavanger at his back. 036a-vju_Panorama: A panoramic view of Stavanger from the Skylounge. 037-DSC_7616-header: Departing From the Stavanger-Sola Airport 037-DSC_7616-headertext: On Thursday, I headed out to the airport, along with someone I had met at the conference. I was hoping to get to walk to a beach near the airport, but my navigational ability tends to be weak normally, and very weak when I'm in a strange place where I can't read any signs. So I walked around a little, then headed back to the airport to catch my flight to Oslo. 037-DSC_7616: A picture just after takeoff, showing the Stavanger airport. 038-DSC_7617: 039-DSC_7618: Heading towards the coast before turning east ot Oslo. 040-DSC_7619: It was a day with low clouds.