21st January 2025

Every morning now is like waking up inside some sort of fairy tale, the scenery and landscape above the Arctic circle is breathtaking.

Sleeping in every morning because it’s dark is normally also something of a fairy tale too, So there are some positives to the darkness.

Did a few domestic chores this morning, ie washing whilst we had Brekky. 

First visit this morning is in Finnesnes

It’s only 20 mins, so no time to go anywhere but enough time to get off the ship, walk in the deep snow and see that it was -13. Impressive..

Stayed out for about 10 minutes, compulsory photos and back on board for a warm beverage.

We spent the rest of the morning, early afternoon just watching this spectacular landscape go by.

It is quite bright and clear today, so we are very lucky.

Arrived in Tromsø about 2 pm.

We had organised to do a guided polar walk but unfortunately it was cancelled as there were only 4 of us booked, 

But not to be put off well do it ourselves.

The famous and beautiful cathedral is on the other side of the harbour from where we’re berthed as is the cable car.

It looks possibly too hard to get there, so we will satisfy ourselves with wandering ship side.

It’s -12 so we start the process of putting on a lot of layers, Stuart taking this a little too far by wearing a pair of puffy pants, not unlike a puffy jacket but for the legs.

Having said that, they are his second layer of pants, thankfully covered by the third….

Lovely afternoon, walking along the waterfront until we come across the polar museum which is a museum dedicated to the early Norwegian explorers, whalers, sealers and fur traders. Interestingly 10% of these were women. 

This included wintering in Svarsbard, tough humans for sure.

I’m struggling with minus temperatures in my fancy warm layers.

Getting a bit dark around 3.30 ish so we successfully found another little coffee spot to warm up a little.

Heading towards the boat we see a few acknowledgments to our friend, Roald Amundsen.

( may have travelled on  a ship by that name once.)

Back on board and another cheeky little Rum and Coke out on the back deck, under the heaters.

Tonight, dinner was a buffet and you can always pick when the seafood is on the menu. People falling over themselves to get the prawn, mussels and crab’s before they run out. As if ??

I have been saying how I am looking forward to seeing Reindeer but not on my plate!!!

In the wild, if you dont mind.

Reindeer casserole was one of the other choices at the buffet. ( yummy too says stuart).

After dinner we were sitting quietly in the lounge reading, blogging etc when the captain ( albeit very subtly ) suggested there was some activity in the night sky.

Not for the naked eye perhaps but more profound perhaps with the camera says he.

Well i have never seen anything like this display.

I will share some shots but as you can imagine, we took quite a lot.

The best part was coming inside was seeing the staff incredibly excited, one of our concierge ladies just ran out in her jammies.

Just one incredibly excited bunch of people, didnt matter who you were.

 ( Mind, you couldn't stay outside very long or bits would start to freeze and fall off)

Quite the display, I hope it continues, but hey tonight was tremendous.