You proved my pattern wrong! Saturday for the past 2 weeks had the lowest readership (again, I don’t know who). But yesterday, I had the 2nd highest readership yet with 28 visitors! Welcome!
Sunday morning started with getting to the bus to go to the International Church of Stavanger, which meets at MHS. It is a wonderful multi-cultural worship in English. When it was time for the children’s song, the front was filled with about 20 kids from many different countries. Anya said, “Wow! It’s the opposite of Cross of Christ!” with our few kids and limited ethnic backgrounds.
Some of the worship leadership team was hit with the flu, so we were encouraged to sing loudly, and we heard a guest pastor from Norway, who just returned from Myanmar.
After worship and some fellowship, we walked from MHS to the center of Stavanger via Gamle Stavanger (Old Stavanger), which is quite picturesque. To prove it, here’s the picture.
I saw in the paper that one of these houses is for sale, but I’ll pass.
At the harbor and city center, we stopped for a Sunday treat, Dolly Dimple’s pizza. For $38, we had a “large” cheese pizza (probably medium by American standards) and 2 sodas with free refills. However, we also had window seats with a great view of the harbor at a mellow time of day. (Things don’t seem to pick up on Sundays until about 2:00 pm.) Here’s the view to my left.
We will welcome friends here on July 2, as their cruise will port in Stavanger that morning. Then, it might look more like this:
Knut says that the cruise industry likes Stavanger because of the deep water port right into the center of the city. They don’t have to bus people into the town.
As I looked out the other window, a bit to my right, here’s my view of the Stavanger Cathedral from the restaurant.
As we sat and dined (and tried to get our $5.17 worth of soda with refills), the weather changed from sunny to rainy to light hail to rainy to sunny to more hail to sunny. The joke is that if you don’t like the weather, just wait 5 minutes. Being close to the ocean means changes in weather, a bit more milder winters, but also there is quite a bit of wind, which is biting cold in the winter.
We caught the #3 bus home–a new route for me. As we were departing from the downtown bus stand, it made sense as the bus stop is closer to our house than the #2 route. Typically, I take the #2 bus, because I get on it close to MHS. So it makes sense to stay on the same bus instead of switching buses, waiting for the bus in the cold and wet.
Since this was a new route, I wasn’t quite sure where to get off. Usually, there is a display and audio that goes through the litany of stops. (I practice my pronunciation–in my mind–against the audio listing each next stop.) So, I got out my phone to see the map. With GPS, 4G, and the bus app, I can actually watch the pointer move along the road. Unfortunately, I misread the small print and got of at Tornerosevein instead of Tronesveien. We had a 3 km (1.86 mile) walk that was a little chilly, but with a good view of the fjord.
We’re home and warm with left over pizza in our fridge. We had a good walk, in spite of the early bus stop.
Anya is back to school tomorrow. With her sickness and winter break, she’s only had 4 days of school since January 23!