Ideas for near Stavanger Norway with DS10 and DS8?

[fridayschild]

A relative of mine and her family are in Stavenger for a while and I am thinking about inviting myself to stay with the DSs in the summer. When I've seen her before we've got on well and last time her DS and my DS1 got on like a house on fire. Lovely though this has been I am thinking that we really do not know them well enough to impose on them for a whole week.

So I thought maybe a few days with them and a few days doing something else in Norway? Sadly I think time in a beautiful log cabin by the lake miles from anywhere is not going to cut it for my DSs. But centre parcs and featherdown farms have been great holidays for us in the past. Does anyone have any suggestions?

We visited Stavanger last year for one day on a cruise. There's a great oil museum there (better than it sounds!) your DSs will like, with a wacky playground made of recycled elements from oil rigs at the back. Also the harbour is full, and I mean absolutely chockablock full, of jellyfish. Other than that, like the rest of the Fjords it's mostly looking beautiful (and it really does) and being really shockingly expensive. I'm sorry, I realise this doesn't help you at all. If you're going to be travelling around the area, the railway going up into the mountains at Flaam is fabulous, but there's nothing else at all at Flaam except for fabulous views across the mountains and the Fjord. There's lots to do in Oslo though including good Viking stuff.

We flew to Oslo - the train journey would've taken forever.

I have spent 2 weeks near Stavanger but it really was a cabin by a lake along a one track road sort of affair. WE were young and childless so we spent 2 weeks driving the most amazing roads and scenery but the weather was atrociously wet. There is the museum of sardine canning in Stavanger.
A cabin by the coast maybe could afford more to do for the kids if the weather was good. We have stayed at a holiday park place near Sogn Fjord but it was a sort of minigolf/tennis court sort of affair.

This was about 10 years ago but we found the locals quite UNfriendly regarding children. OTOH we might have been a bit PFB and maybe they did have a point.

We went to a fire engines museum which the DS (3 at the time) loved.

thanks very much for the ideas. My family have now decided we will all have a summer holiday together, so Norway will have to wait for another year!

Whether a family holiday is a good idea is another thread entirely....