We grab breakfast, meet at 12:00 for more information where we give Martine her birthday card! At 1:15 we jump in taxi’s to the airport… but we still have no idea where we’re going! Based on the “7.5 hour drive” we heard about, my guess was Trondheim.
You know how in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie got a golden ticket? This is exactly what that feels like. Literally 12 of us are arriving at the airport with no clue as to what’s next, when Brita walks by and hands us our boarding passes to….. Stavanger! Sweet! Those of us with maps pull them out to see where we’re off to… it looks like the West Coast of Norway right on the water.
At the airport I buy a Lonely Planet Norway book and do some research. Stavanger is a city that was initially successful due to its fishing, then ship building, and then more recently, oil. It looks like there’s lot of oil related locations – an oil museum, and the town appears to be fairly well off due to the oil boom.
It’s a quick 40 minute flight. We’re staying at a hotel by the airport due to the hotel workers strike that’s going on throughout the country.
We have a great dinner, and later have our dictionaries taken away from us. We learn that tomorrow we’ll be leaving the hotel at 10:00, and won’t be getting back until midnight! It looks like it’s going to be a huge day, so I’m going to need to sleep!
Lars Phillips 