The travels of Tim and Megan: Tromso, Norway

Wednesday

It was very early start on Wednesday morning, as we were joined by Neena and Alex in a 5.15am cab pick-up to get out to London Gatwick, which incidentally takes about 65 hours from central London! We had booked a mid-winter trip to Tromso, the northern-most city in Norway. Brrrr. The main attractions were a chance to see the elusive Northern Lights, which are easier to spot in the winter months, and a dog-sled ride through the snow. Norway was also pretty much the last country in western and central Europe that we had not yet conquered!

Our flight from London to Oslo was all good, although we had to endure a 5-hour stop-over in the Norwegian capital. Luckily they have a very fine airport there and we grabbed some delicious Pizza Hut pizza for lunch and the time went pretty quickly. Then we had another 2-hour flight from Oslo to Tromso, arriving in the far north at 7.30pm.

Norway is a Nordic country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard (where polar bears and walruses roam freely!). Norway has a total area of 385,252 sq km and a population of just under 5 million, making it one of the most sparsely populated countries in Europe. The majority of the country shares a border to the east with Sweden; its northern-most region is bordered by Finland and Russia; and in its south Norway borders the Skagerrak Strait, across which Denmark is situated. The capital city is Oslo. Norway's extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea, is home to its famous fjords.

After WWII, Norway experienced rapid economic growth, thanks to the Norwegian shipping and merchant marine and domestic industrialisation and, from the early 1970s, as a result of exploiting large oil and natural gas deposits that had been discovered in the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea. Today, Norway ranks as the second wealthiest country in the world in monetary value, with the largest capital reserve per capita of any nation. Norway is the world's fifth largest oil exporter and the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of its GDP.

Tromso is a city and municipality in Troms county, northern Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Tromso. Tromso city is the ninth largest urban area in Norway and the seventh largest city by population. The population of Tromso municipality is around 64,000. Most of Tromso including the city centre is located on the island of Tromsoya, about 350km inside the Arctic Circle. The city is warmer than most other places located on the same latitude, due to the warming effect of the Gulf Stream.

At Tromso airport we met Andrew, who had flown in from Dubai via 97 airport transfers. Alex and Andrew were staying in a different hotel to the rest of us, so Neena, Megan and Tim hopped off the airport bus and dragged suitcases along the frozen main street (literally - there was a thick layer of ice covering the road) to Skansen Hotell (with two Ls).

The woman on the reception desk was very helpful, but our hotel room was just plain weird. We had ordered a triple room, but what we got was a double room with a crazy fold-out camp stretcher in it. Poor form. But that was just the beginning. It was a really large room but one half of it was crowded with furniture - a huge coffee table, a couch and two large armchairs all squeezed into one end of the hotel room. The bathroom was awesome - the centrepiece being a massive spa bath with flashing strobe lights that changed colour, lighting up the entire bathroom. And that wasn't even the weirdest part of our room. The absolute highlight was a framed picture on the wall - it was actually four small pictures in the one frame, two of red roses, and two pencil sketches. One sketch was of a man and a woman eating pizza in a restaurant and the other was of the same couple lying in bed, with the man kissing the woman, who appeared to have died at some stage between the first and second sketches. So we're not sure if this series of pictures was intended to be some romantic scene or if the artist was some sicko who liked to kiss corpses. Either way, we had the strangest hotel room we had ever seen.

After settling in, we met Alex and Andrew for dinner at a Spanish tapas restaurant, which was very nice. It was our first confirmation that Norway is indeed a very expensive place. We were all pretty knackered after a long day of travelling, so we retired to our hotels after dinner.

Thursday

We were greeted on Thursday morning with a hotel breakfast - Norwegian style... There was some good orange juice and dry bread and jam, which was the pick of it, to be honest. Then there was a bizarre selection of cheese, cold meats, pate, caviar in a tube, and a bowl of cold fish chunks swimming in an oily liquid. We almost threw up just looking at it!

After breakfast, we met Andrew and Alex in Tromso's main street and we decided to begin our day with a trip up the city's famous cable car. Our timing was brilliant, as our taxi pulled up outside the cable car just as the first ride of the day was about to leave. They only go once every half hour, so we avoided a long wait. The view from the top of the cable car hill is breath-taking (see photos below). It was also insanely cold at the top of the hill. There was easily a metre of snow on the ground, probably more, and the strong wind whipping in at us as we lined up our photos was well below zero, but it was worth it for the views. The sunlight bouncing off the snow covered mountains was beautiful.

Incidentally, while we were in Tromso, the sun was rising around 10.30am and setting around 1.30pm! In late December there is almost constant darkness and conversely in the middle of summer, Tromso is treated to the "midnight sun" - the sun doesn't actually set at all at the height of summer. Itgradually sinks lower and lower in the sky, as if it is about to set, before bottoming out and rising in the sky again, without having disappeared beneath the horizon!

Back down on ground level, we managed to catch a bus, which gave us a tiki-tour through suburban Tromso, before dropping us back in the city centre. We thawed out in a nice cafe, plotting our next move. We settled on one of Tromso's most popular tourist attractions, the Polarmuseet (rather predictably, the Polar Museum).

The Polar Museum was opened on 18 June 1978. The museum is located in one of Tromso's oldest buildings - a wooden building on the waterfront that dates from the early 1800s. Polar hunting and research expeditions are the focal points of the Polarmuseet. Displays feature Fridtjof Nansen's journey to the North Pole in his ship "Fram" in 1893 - 1896 and the life of Antarctic explorer and Norwegian hero Roald Amundsen, which we found fascinating. There are also exhibitions devoted to the first hunters on Svalbard, the trappers of polar bears, arctic foxes and seals (which we were not so fond of).

Given that it was dark by mid-afternoon and that Andrew had been struck down with a nasty bout of food poisoning (don't eat hot dogs from airport kiosks), after our museum visit, we collected some delicious snacks from the supermarket and went back to our hotels to prepare for the exciting night ahead. We were booked on a Northern Lights tour!

The Northern Lights (or Aurora Borealis) is a natural light display in the sky, particularly in polar regions, caused by the collision of charged particles directed by the Earth's magnetic field. An aurora is usually observed at night and tends to be more prevalent in the winter months (December to March). They are most commonly visible between 60 and 72 degrees north latitude - Tromso is about 69 degrees north latitude. In Norway, the most common colour for the Northern Lights is a bright green, but occasionally they also appear in reds, yellows and whites as well, and often look like curtains We had tried to see the Northern Lights on our trip to Iceland at the end of 2009, but it was too cloudy and our tour was cancelled.

Needless to say, we were super excited when the van picked us up at 7pm for our Northern Lights excursion. We had a solid collection of lollies, biscuits and chips, as well as some vodka and a wee bit of whisky. You have got to be prepared when you are standing outside in the freezing wastes in the middle of the night - a hip flask of whisky was just the ticket. Sadly, Andrew's dodgy hot dog prevented him from joining us, but as it turned out, he didn't miss much.

We drove for around two hours, east away from the lights of Tromso towards the Finnish border. Eventually we stopped in what looked like an abandoned trailer park and we all got out of the van and stood in the complete darkness, in -8 degrees, with half a foot of snow beneath our feet and watched the sky. And waited. And watched. And waited some more. And then got back in the van because it was freezing. It was a cloudy night, which makes spotting the Northern Lights almost impossible. We were hoping that one of the occasional patches of clear sky that came and went might show us the magical dancing lights. But alas, we saw nothing.

However, we passed the time while we waited for the sky to clear by sliding down the hill on a traditional wooden snow sled and by stomping around in snow shoes that the tour guides had in the back of the van (photos below). They also provided us with hot blackcurrant drink and a Norwegian sweet cake, called "leksa". The whisky and lollies helped pass the time too! We eventually gave up on seeing the Northern Lights around midnight and drove back to Tromso. We were grateful for the Kathmandu hand warmers we had brought with us, which helped us to defrost on the long drive back to the city.