Tammy Trip Reports | Day 4 – Stavanger, Norway

02 Oct

Posted at 23:43h in Uncategorized by Tammy 0 Comments

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Day 4 – Stavanger, Norway – The Hike of Our Lives

We had big big plans today! Ever since the first year Norway cruises were announced, I wanted to climb Pulpit Rock. So much that I started exercising!!

That’s commitment, no?

I was picturing climbing with my family while they all repeatedly had to stop and wait for me, or wonder if I was going to make it. I decided I was not going to let that happen, and started running!

And then we had to cancel the cruise! Whoops.

But here was my second chance. I was coming for you, Pulpit Rock!

Pulling into Stavanger:

After some research, we had decided to forgo the Disney excursion and do Pulpit Rock on our own. It would give us a little more time to reach the top, but it did leave us on a super tight time schedule to get there.

To get there, you had to catch a ferry followed by a bus. The first ferry was supposed to leave 15 minutes after the all ashore time, and was about 1 mile from the port. If you missed the first ferry, the next one was 40 minutes later! Then the bus times didn’t line up as well either. Missing that first ferry could put you an hour or so behind, and an hour was a lot of time on a day when time was short!

We got up super early to make sure we were some of the first people off. We went upstairs to Cabanas for a big breakfast to fuel us. Food would be on short supply today!

Here’s mine:

AND waffles!

We went back to the room and grabbed our stuff and then went down to wait for the gangway to open. There were four or five other people down there with the same plans.

Tom and Sarah shows up a couple of minutes later, and we all got ready to run. Literally.

They opened the gangway at 7:45 and we disembarked. The ferry was leaving at eight o’clock!

Then we ran. Like really ran. Okay, it was some combo of jogging, sprinting, and speed walking. There were probably 30 other people around us doing the same thing.

Tom and Stephen got out ahead of Sarah and I, so we just followed. When we got out of breath and tried to fast walk, they “encouraged” us to go faster.

As Tom said, this was a case where even 30 seconds could make a difference.

Dang it, Joan! Okay, we picked up the pace.

At one point, Stephen and Tom turned left while the rest of the crowd went straight. Sarah and I were like, “Are you sure?!”

They both had their phones out and assured us they were right.

They were! Apparently there was an alternate route.

We made it!! Just in time. The ferry literally pulled away within 2 minutes of us boarding. With people still running up to the dock.

Norwegians don’t mess around.

We found a place to sit and enjoyed the ride over. Making that first ferry was a huge relief. It gave us a much better time frame for the day overall.

We had a hard turn time around up top, and the more time we had to get up there, the better! This is the area where we sat.

We talked to Tom and Sarah for the 45 minute ride over, and then all lined up to get off and catch the bus:

Preikestolen! That’s Pulpit Rock!

We had to split up to find seas on the bus, but we made it:

The ride over was fairly scenic! Here’s a bad picture of sheep:

And we were there!

We stopped at the bathroom and started the big climb!

Pulpit Rock was a 5 mile hike round trip with an 1150 foot elevation gain. It was rough at times, I’m not going to lie.

Before we left, Stephen and I had seriously studied up on Jess’s Norway trip report and her Pulpit Rock climb. Keeping in mind that Jess is a MARATHONER, and still said it was hard, I was a little apprehensive!

It turns out that walking with Tom and Sarah was absolutely perfect. Tom and Stephen had a similar pace, and Sara and I had a similar pace. It was so nice for me not to feel like I was making everyone wait and be under all that pressure. Tom was like a little mountain goat at times, but he stopped to take pictures of course, so that got us some extra breaks. At times I would get ahead of Sarah, so of course I had to stop and wait for her/desperately catch my breath. And at times she got ahead of me and waited for me! The guys just flat out stopped to wait for us on a regular basis. But they were good natured about it.

Jess had said in her trip report that the first 15 minutes was some of the hardest. I was sooo glad I had read that and warned Sarah. That first 15 minutes was very hard! And if it was going to be that the whole way, there was no way in heck I was going to make it!

But we pressed through and it got better!

I think this was the first picture stop:

That’s the bus drop off down below:

No picture stops lasted very long.

The hike seemed to go in stages of big elevation changes, to slight inclines so you could recoup. The biggest inclines were definitely at the beginning and towards the end.

And occasionally we went down, which was disheartening.

I appreciate whomever carted all of these boards up here.

We had to climb that mountain up ahead!

These inclines look so much flatter in pictures!

At one point someone passed us coming down. Another hiker near us asked if we were almost there. And the person coming down laughed and laughed…

We took some pictures of each other at scenic stops:

I saw these tents and realized if Chase had been with us, he would have stayed right here and never come back to the ship!

It was beautiful in all directions.

Almost there! We were going to make it! You can see how narrow/treacherous the path got at times. I never feared for my safety, but this was not the place to mess around.

About two hours after we left the busses, we could see the top! Yay!!!!

We made it!

And it was spectacular!

Selfie!

Stephen is not a fan of heights, but I knew I was going to the edge.

I gave Stephen my camera and started walking. It was sooooooo windy up there! I mean the wind could move my whole body at times.

So I did the smart thing and sat down about 10 feet from the edge and scooted on my bottom. Tom was out there, I think he did the same thing while Sarah and Stephen watched from a safe distance.

Pulpit Rock toes!

Stephen’s caption for this was something along the lines of me being crazy.

There were a decent number of people at the top, but I’m sure it got much more crowded later.

I texted my Dad from up there to let them know we had made it. When we showed my parents pictures of Pulpit Rock the night before, I unknowingly sent my mom into a panic. She apparently didn’t sleep all night long worried that I was going to fall off Pulpit Rock.

So I put her mind at ease. Kind of?

I wanted Stephen to get a picture of me on the rock, but I’m hard to see with everyone around:

We walked back towards the path to find Tom and Sarah and a good place to sit that wasn’t quite as windy.

There’s Tom in his “I’ll do anything for a good picture” persona.

We brought a little snack with us and sat and ate for a few minutes.

This is how Stephen preferred to look over the edge. Not quite at the top!

We realized this was a good spot for pictures and not quite as windy as the top, so we took turns taking pictures of each other.

Amusingly enough, I just went to check Tom’s trip report to see if I got the times right. I googled “Tom Bricker Pulpit Rock” and the images that came up were pictures I took of them! Ha!

Here’s Tom’s report of that day with his amazing as usual pictures. You’ll see us in quite a few!

www.disneytouristblog.com/norwegian-fjords-disney-cruise-line-report-part-3/

Sorry, the link isn’t working for some reason! So cut and paste.

We decided it was time to start down. The first few people on the Disney excursion were starting to reach the top at this point. We also saw a family we had talked to on the ferry with kids (maybe 8-12 years old) who made it! We were excited for them.

Goodbye Pulpit Rock! By the way, I heard they closed the rock for a few days after we were there to film the next Mission Impossible movie. That’s super cool, but I would have been so sad if we had missed it!

This was one of the single file paths near the top:

Going down was definitely easier, although no walk in the park. The path was a lot more crowded which slowed us down at times.

These reminded me of the trolls from Frozen!

I didn’t take nearly as many pictures going down!

We reached the bottom and lined up for our bus. We had made good time and were right on target to be back with an hour or so to walk around town.

This is when things got a little dicey. We were there in plenty of time for the next bus, but the bus was late. Like really late. Which started to make people nervous. If the bus was late, we could miss the ferry. We had a couple of ferry’s that would get us there in time, but one was cutting it close.

When the bus pulled up, the line was on the wrong side of it. Which was okay at first as people started to make their way around the front in an orderly fashion, but then people who weren’t in line came from the other side, and the back of the line broke off and went around the back of the bus.

It was mass mayhem. We ended up in a giant group massed at the door. At one point there was some yelling and pushing up ahead and the driver came out and yelled at everyone.

Tom and Sarah made it on but we got shuffled to the back. There was no way we would have made it, but then we saw Sarah back at the front talking to the driver and saying, “Those are our friends!!! They were right next to us, you have to let them on!”

And he waved us up. Woohoo! Thank you, Sarah! Many people stood so we could cram more people on, but I did get a seat.

We made the ferry and sat in these chairs on the way back:

We had about an hour and a half before the ship left, so we planned on walking much slower through town this time! Ha!

Tom and Sarah were off in search of School Bread, and I was looking for a Norway Starbucks mug, so we said goodbye. We had such a great day with them!

Stavanger was a neat little town!

We found the Starbucks and I went in and stared at the mug wall for a minute. They were out!! Dang it, Joan! Someone else from the cruise came in at the same time and was also said his version of Dang it, Joan. He told me we had another chance in Bergen, so that was good news! I made a mental note to go to Starbucks early!