The City
Stavanger is a cute town located in the Southern side of Norway. Although one can easily interpret Stavanger as a small town, it has a population around 120.000 and this makes Stavanger fourth largest city of Norway after Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim. The population is mainly concentrated in the city center but a decent amounth of people live in the outer city. The city has a coastline on the Northern Sea and a big harbour is located in that coastline. Also, the biggest and deepest underwater tunnel of the world is located between Stavanger and Tau which lengths about 14.4 kilometers and takes approximately 15 minutes to go from one side to other.
You can expect to see people riding their bikes to commute or carry out daily tasks but the city offers bus lines covering almost every part of the city.
Transportation
I think we can agree that one of the first things that tourists concern when visiting a new city is transportation. As most of the iconic landsights are located close to each other and to the city center, it is pretty easy to travel by foot in Stavanger. Also there are some shops downtown renting bikes to people. As the city is generally flat, renting a bike might be a good option for sightseeing. The city also offers comprehensive bus lines, you can use those if you are going somewhere far away or just don’t want to walk!
Thanks to the Stavanger being a small city in terms of size and available facilities, I think it is fair to say one can travel within Stavanger without facing any difficulty.
People
Most of the citizens in Stavanger is Norwegian, but it is likely for you to encounter people who immigrated from Syria and Eritrea because of the civil wars in these countries. During my time in Stavanger, I had the chance to observe their social life and I think that people of Stavanger live in harmony and there isn’t any cultural or social conflict.
During my five day stay at Stavanger, I have chatted with locals, tried local restaurants, shopped from local markets and called lots of taxies. But I haven’t encountered any person I had a hard time to communicate in English, they all were very fluent in English. Also everyone was so friendly and kind.
Like most of the Northern European countries, Norwegian people are very strict when it comes to rules. They expect everyone to obey and to be careful about them.
Also, smoking is not common in Norway and not welcomed. I don’t know whether it is banned to smoke in the streets or no but I didn’t see anyone doing so. Therefore it is almost impossible to see any cigarette butts in streets. Also, I didn’t see any place selling cigarettes so I advice smokers to buy their cigarettes in advance.
Places
Preikestolen, one of the mightiest and most beautiful mountains, is located in Stavanger. The Preikestolen is located near a river called Lysefjorden. Climbing to the top of the mountain is relatively easy even though there are some tight pathwalks and some stiff hills and an average person can climb to its top within 1.5 hour. The view from the top is breathtaking and I think coming to Stavanger to just see the view is totaly worth it. Also you can take some pretty cool pictures at the summit.