Day 9 saw us spending the day in Stavanger on Norway's southwest coast, and this is one of Stavanger's few attractions - Sverd i fjell (Swords in Mountain) commemorating some historic battle way back in the year 872.

We were staying in another B&B which happened to be near the three swords but was a few kilometres out of central Stavanger, so we stole the B&B's bikes and rode them into town. This is Mosvangen Park, "a popular place for locals to wander and picnic amid the greenery", and a place for Aaron to ruin the serenity on his bike.

Check out that house in the background to the right of the fountain, near the top of the water spout - that doesn't look right. Anyway, Stavanger is Norway's fourth largest city with a population of around 120,000 and became among the most influential and important Norwegian cities after oil was discovered in the North Sea in the 1960s. There aren't a lot of worthwhile attractions here, but we had a day to spare so why not.

Central Stavanger around its little harbour is a great wee spot on a nice day for an expensive drink, so we didn't do that, and opted to raid the supermarket instead and drink with the money-conscious cheapskates.

This might look like fun in a photo, but not when you're standing there watching it. These two got sealed in these oversized beach balls, and like retarded hamsters on a wheel they had to run inside the ball to propel it forward in a race. Two big problems though: a) there's only so much oxygen in that air-tight ball and once it's gone it's gone, and b) they had a big head-wind, and this was as far as they got hahaha!

It takes a big man to wear a dress in public. It takes an even bigger man to laugh at that man, so I took his photo from a distance instead.

Oslo, Stavanger, and Bergen (to come) all have an area known as Gamle which is the old part of town with preserved or restored wooden buildings. This is Gamle Stavanger, very cute, and very quiet. Some of the houses are owned by the municipality but most are privately owned.

Here we have the Shit shop, where you can buy Shit shirts and Shit shoes and heaps of other Shit stuff. Website here, where you can read about Shit and buy yourself some Shit online.

Wow they don't make playgrounds here like they do where I come from. Slides, swings, see-saws, flying foxes - none of that here, just lots of things to graffiti, and these big red balls.

This guy has a number 1 on his head. Better than having a number two on your head I suppose ;)

Good sunsets here, and very late ones in summer. While we were here it wasn't dark until well after 10pm.

Day 10, and we caught a car ferry east out of Stavanger and headed for our main reason for coming to Stavanger in the first place (it wasn't the big swords).

It was this: Preikestolen, which translated into English is Pulpit Rock - a huge cliff-top plateau towering 600 metres above the Lysefjord below with reputedly incredible views. Getting to Pulpit Rock from the car park involves a two-hour, 3.8km hike with an ascent of about 300 metres. No worries, and off we went.

The trail wasn't too bad at first, but it then started to get rocky. Very rocky!

And then it got very fucking rocky hehe, and we enjoyed it immensely (well I did :) Video here.

As we climbed (more and more slowly) the views got more and more impressive.

Swimming in a mountain lake probably barely above zero degrees. If only I'd brought my towel ;)

Anyway, after two hours of fun, we made it.

Not bad huh, not bad at all. The Lysefjord was the first of several fjords we saw on this part of the trip. Fjords are carved by the action of glaciers in the ice ages and subsequently flooded by the sea when the glaciers later retreated. Norway, Greenland, and New Zealand are commonly known to have plenty of them. Lysefjord here is 42kms long from end to end. Because of the inhospitable terrain, the fjord is only lightly populated with just two villages along its length at opposite ends of the fjord. The few people who live along the fjord are only able to leave their homes by boat, as the slopes are too steep for roads.

Good spot for this! These were just the aftermath photos. They climbed up with her dress and his suit in their backpacks and got changed at the top.

Unfortunately we arrived about the same time as the cloud and so the photos really don't do the views any justice. Regardless, Kristina took a video here of it all.

604 metres straight down to the water, or the rocks if you didn't get a good enough run up ;) 30,000 BASE jumps have apparently been performed from Pulpit Rock in the last 15 years; nine of those jumps didn't work out so well.

I love throwing stones. It's a hobby that never faded from my childhood. Video here hehe.

Likewise for dad here who then sent down a few boulders of his own. Great fun!

We stayed up there for about an hour, breathing it all in, before I decided I wanted to drive to the other side and check out that area down there - it looked nice! So we set off back down the mountain for another two hours of bouldering, followed by short drive to the other side of the fjord.

And it certainly was nice, the whole area looked like something out of Dinotopia or Lost.

According to my GPS, the (single-lane) road we were on only continued for another few kilometres so we followed it and found...

...this anonymous lake overlooked by this one property. Imagine having this as your backyard! Aside from a few birds it was completely silent and peaceful here - I absolutely loved it!