Kristiansand is in southern Norway right in a little bay on the North Sea. If you stand on the beach and look straight ahead, you have the northern tip of Denmark and to the right you may even see my beloved Newcastle…..OK, maybe not. Not unlike many a city in Europe a river runs right through the center of it.
Kristiansand is a cool place to visit and has something that I never expected. Bright hot sunshine. Maybe I have seen one to many videos of the Lillehammer Olympics, but I never expected 85-degree weather. The attractions I visited are mostly on two streets that run parallel to the seafront. Local bars are very nice with a warm tavern feel and then you stumble out onto a seafront street and it really could be a Mediterranean tourist spot. Minus the fighting, flirting and throwing up of course. I only ventured to the eastern side of Kristiansand on one occasion….led by two girls and the promise of a bar with a pool table. The “bar” turned out to be a local youth club but it did the trick. The locals are really a good bunch of people with the only sour note being the usual European over exuberant can’t hold their liquor teenagers. I witnessed a couple of scuffles while I was there. Luckily while some area’s love to take on any group of Englishmen as some sort of pride thing (are you listening Jedburgh) they really seemed disinterested in us.
I would recommend Kristiansand to any person who enjoys looking at the history of a place. Kristiansand has some very nice buildings, including the church and its grounds that I failed to enter but did walk past every day for 10 days. There are also stone forts to see which offer great views of the area. The city also has an interactive zoo that has an amusement park. My greatest loss in Kristiansand and really in all of Norway was that I failed to visit the Kanonenmuseum……anyone, eh. The Kristiansand Cannon Museum. Home of the world’s largest cannon. Just perfect for the warmonger in all of us.
The one drawback to visiting Norway. Don’t go on a budget. The British pound, US dollar you name it. When it comes to sitting in a bar they don’t stretch through a night. Norway puts a heavy tax on alcohol so while entering the zoo will cost you 50 Norwegian Kroner (about $8 or 4 English pounds), which is very reasonable to enter an attraction they got it all back on my beer. 38Nkr for a beer ($6 or 3.50 English pounds). Only in the upscale bars am I used to paying that much. That’s the whole point of having drinks in local bars and getting a buzz then going to the higher class bar and nursing a drink. Isn’t it?
I highly recommend a visit to Kristiansand if you can. It is a real relaxing place. It is very popular with Norwegians as a vacation spot, and they can’t be wrong.