Overcast last night so no Aurora sightings sadly.
In spite of breaking his no fat diet with 5 predinner peanuts and 3 olives, Simon has had his best night yet. A mystery but we will take it!
Meanwhile I had another bad night due to that terrible tapping noise. I recorded it so let’s see if I can attach a video of it. Sorry I don’t know how to do audio clips. Actually, scratch that: it’s taking too long to load. Just imagine a loud dripping tap at twice the usual speed.
We arrived in Tromsø this morning. The city is known as The Paris of the North. Really? Can no one come up with more original comparisons? Every city in Northern Europe is the Paris of the North, or at a push, Venice, if it’s got canals. Sad. Allegedly it’s because of its spectacular lights at night, which doesn’t augur well for aurora viewing, or perhaps for its surprisingly sophisticated and cosmopolitan population. Yeah, right.
The middle of town is 50 minutes walk from the port where we’ve docked, so they have laid on free shuttles for us. They were initially overwhelmed by demand it seemed but it looked better an hour later, and we headed in soon after 11.
Simon had booked a walking tour months ago , but unfortunately we didn’t have the details of our arrival time then, so it was due to start at 10 am. We cancelled that perforce, and found an online guided tour as a backup. It worked out very well. Its ability to detect our exact location was uncanny but very helpful. The recorded guide could tell us exactly where we were and what we were looking at, at every moment. It took about half an hour to do a loop around downtown and the waterfront, looking at the highlights. I don’t know about Paris; it’s more like a charmless version of Queenstown.
After the tour we visited the Polar museum, established in 1978 to commemorate 50 years since Amundsen’s plane went down with the loss of everyone on board. He was on a rescue mission for another explorer at the time. Seems a strange thing to celebrate. The museum was small and grim. Tromsø is a fairly young city, about the same age as Wellington, and was based around hunting. Basically any fluffy creature was fair game: polar bears, seals, foxes, walruses, reindeer. They even had a diorama of a man clubbing a baby seal to death. I took a photo but it didn’t come out very well.
They have oil money here now, and tourism, and even a university. But it doesn’t really appeal. Being in the arctic circle it has permanent night over some of winter, and continuous daylight in summer.
On the plus side I got to practice my Norwegian today. I asked for two tickets at the museum, and the lady smiled and asked in English if we qualified for the senior discount, which wiped the smile off my face. It was better when I bought a fridge magnet at the gift shop after our visit. I want to buy this I said in my best Norwegian, to which the lady smiled again – it was the same lady – and she said seventy five kroner in Norwegian in reply. Unfortunately I’d only learnt seventy this morning, so I was a bit slow on the uptake, and didn’t take the opportunity to ask can I pay by credit card? A small interaction but very positive. She seemed to think it was cute that I was trying to speak the local language, rather than painfully embarrassing.
After the museum, we walked back along the main street. They had some lovely knitwear, but it was all eyewateringly expensive for someone not paid in Kroner, so I wasn’t tempted to buy anything. Plus, as I’ve mentioned, I don’t actually need any knitwear just now.
We took the shuttle back to the ship, had some lunch and tried to nap but in spite of feeling tired and having a bad night last night, I couldn’t sleep. This is as far north as we’re going on this trip so I’m hoping to do some aurora spotting tonight; I hope I’m not too tired.