Seattle to Stavanger, Norway from $474

🌍 About Stavanger, Norway

Stavanger is Norway's oil capital, which is why a town this size punches above its weight on food — several Michelin stars, RE-NAA among them — and feels more cosmopolitan than you'd expect. Most people come for Preikestolen, the flat cliff that drops 604m straight into the Lysefjord: a 4–5 hour round-trip hike, or seen from below on a fjord cruise. In town, Gamle Stavanger is Europe's best-preserved wooden settlement, around 170 white 18th-century houses, and Øvre Holmegate is the street a local hairdresser had painted every color in 2005 to pull in foot traffic. Come late June to mid-September, when the Preikestolen trail is snow-free and the fjord cruises run; outside summer it's wet, dark, and the clifftop turns icy.