Travel Diary: Day 3 Stavanger

Today would be the first day in port. We docked in Stavanger at around 7:00 am in the morning, though we woke up a little bit earlier in order to watch the ship arrive at the port as we knew the scenery in the area would be particularly beautiful. I forced myself out of bed at 6:00 am when my alarm went off, fighting off my instinct to just shut my eyes, roll over and go back to sleep. I dressed quickly and we went right up to the 18th deck, as we would get the best view from there. As this was a perfect opportunity to take some brilliant photos, I made it a point to take the camera with me, and spent a fair amount of time snapping away at the scenery. Since we looked somewhat decent, and we were pretty close to the buffet, we decided to grab some breakfast, taking special care to nab a table by the window in order to savour the scenery while eating. We then returned to our cabins to finish preparing before we went out to explore the area.

With cruises, the majority of the time you can simply walk of the ship and into the town you've arrived at, so as soon as we had disembarked we were able to begin looking around. We started by walking up some pretty cobbled streets with a relatively steep incline- quite a work out considering the time of day! Luckily, this did also mean that we had the opportunity to burn off some of the food we'd over-consumed. We then made our way down to a beautiful park, where we sat and enjoyed the scenery for a short while. After relaxing briefly at the park, we headed over to a museum. However, as it turned out that you had to pay to enter (the cost of living is particularly high in Norway, which meant that everything, including entry to the museum, was ridiculously expensive) we didn't actually go inside. We did make good use of the free WiFi that we discovered the museum offered, however. Following this brief stint at the museum we ambled through more cobbled streets, checking out the shops that lined them and snapping away like nobody's business. Finally, we ended up at a cute little market area which offered trinkets, souvenirs and fluffy rugs, hats etc., many of which were made from reindeer skin. At this point we were pretty exhausted from the hours of walking, and our tummies were starting to rumble so, with the ship in sight, we thought it was just about time that we headed back and rushed over to the buffet. 

After lunch had finished, the others went off to watch 'The Jungle Book' at 3:00 pm in the cinema on board. I debated going, but ultimately decided to stay back as my hair was due a wash, dry and straighten, which takes me hours, so I really needed to use the time available to do that. Three hours later (I'm not exaggerating, though I did take a pretty long, hot shower) and my hair was all straight and nice and ready to go.

Having looked at the menu in the restaurant we decided that there wasn't anything that really caught our attention, so we thought that this time we'd opt for a more casual meal and check out the buffet instead. I enjoyed having dinner at the buffet a lot! It was nice and relaxed, and we managed to get a table with a view of the sea, which helped add to the atmosphere. They were serving east Asian food in the buffet, and everything was so delicious. About an hour after we'd finished eating, we watched a show that was being performed in the on board theatre. The show was pretty spectacular- it involved pulsing lights and catchy, modern music brought to life with amazing voices and breathtaking dance moves, all set against an illuminated background. The whole theatre was alive and buzzing. I thoroughly enjoyed it! The day was finished off with another fantastic sleep, worn out and exhausted after a long day of walking and sightseeing.