Kristiansand, Norway's sunniest city

The two-week motorhome premiere was coming to an end and our last stop was the summer city of Kristiansand. If you want to follow our Norway trip from the start, you can start here.

Summer finally arrived in earnest and our day in Kristiansand was warm and sunny. The city was full of holidaymakers and it was with our hearts in our throats that we managed to manoeuvre the motorhome into the seemingly only available (and tiny) parking space in town. Slightly sweaty and shaking from having managed this ordeal without major mishaps, we were now ready to go exploring.

I have been to Kristiansand once before many many years ago. It was a cruise with the girls from Gothenburg to Kristiansand when we got off the boat on a windy March morning to get some fresh air ashore. I was not at all impressed by the city and was most eager to go back to the cabin and crawl into bed for a while. When Henrik told me about this cosy summer town and that we absolutely had to go here, I was quite difficult to persuade, I had a completely different picture. As I have re-evaluated Kristiansand, it really is a great city! We started our tour in the new Art silo, an art museum built in an old grain silo. It is the silo you see in the picture at the beginning. An exciting museum located in the old harbour area where there is also beautiful art around. Here you will also find Kilden Theatre and Concert Hall.

Full of art, we walked on towards the city centre with a traditional pedestrian street and many shops. In the centre of town stands the beautiful cathedral. The attentive visitor will notice that the altar is facing the wrong way, that is, west rather than east. This is not due to an architect losing his compass, but to the desire to return the wall of the old church that burnt down.

Now we turned down towards the harbour and Fiskebrygga, a lovely harbour area with restaurants and cafes. The longest queue in town went to Brygga ice cream parlour but the wait was well worth it when we finally munched on our first summer ice cream during this trip.

We only stayed a few hours in Kristiansand so we didn't have time to see everything the city has to offer. It's a fairly small city with just under 100,000 inhabitants, but at least in summer there's plenty to do here. As it is said to be Norway's sunniest city, you can for example visit Bystranda, a beach with white sand and palm trees in the centre of town. If you prefer shade and greenery, you can visit Ravnedalen, a cosy green area just outside the city. That will simply have to be next time.

We continued towards the last stop of the trip, the marina Sjøterassen just outside Sandefjord. We parked the motorhome just down by the boat jetty and had a lovely evening and an absolutely fantastic morning sun before it was time to chug on home to Karlstad again. Here you can read about the car park at Sjøterassen.