Sailing back to Stavanger

Hengjanefossen

There are dozens, maybe hundreds of waterfalls along the fjord, some of them having worn a path so deep into the cliff face that you don't realize they're there until you're directly in front of them.

This spectacular waterfall starts at the very top of the cliff and falls hundreds of meters to the rocks below.

The cliffs

I have so many pictures of the cliffs on either side of the fjord that I haven't had a chance to even look at most of them, so I may have better shots than this. Still, pretty stunning.

Mountain goat

They're wild, but because of all the tourist boats passing by, they have developed a taste for banana peels and will gather hopefully on the shore when a boat approaches.

Now, THAT'S a fjord!

Lysefjord.

This is the one port on this cruise where I really hoped for nice weather, and I got it. Mostly sunny, warm, perfect for riding on the top deck of a boat and gaping at the cliffs towering over either side of the water and fading in the distance, the waterfalls, the rocky beaches, even some mountain goats!

Stavanger 2

I decided I liked this picture of Stavanger better than the one I used in the previous post, so I was going to switch pictures, and then I decided to just post both.

Stavanger

We're on the west coast of Norway now, deep in fjord country. And although I've seen maps and know how the Norwegian coastline is basically one huge zigzag, like a feather seen in silhouette, when you're sailing up the coast, you'd never even know the fjords were there. It's just pretty Scandinavian coastline, rocky, heavily forested, with occasional towns and cities around harbors. But some of those "harbors" are really sounds leading to fjords, and extend inland for miles.

Here's the harbor of Stavanger, a typically picturesque small Scandinavian city where the ship is docked today. But the harbor leads into a fjord, which branches out and curls around into a couple more fjords. One of which, Lysefjord, I will be visiting this afternoon.