So in all, it was a rather pleasant day's outing - and it was only a 20-something minute train journey south from Wimbledon, so it wasn't very far for us to travel but was outside London nonetheless, being in Surrey. I know I didn't research properly what there was to see and do at Brooklands aside from the Concorde, so was pleasantly surprised at what we encountered - I don't think I fully explained to Sasha what to expect from the Concorde side of things, but she was happy enough to come along on the trip and remarked as soon as we hopped off Concorde "I want to fly on one now!", fully aware that Concorde no longer graces the skies. In fact, what we experienced is likely to be the closest we'll ever get to flying in a Concorde - there are people around who seem intent on trying to get an Air France example back in the air (British Airways, who retain ownership of their Concorde's, refuse to entertain the idea) but we shall see if that ever happens. Mind you, as much as I would have liked to have flown in one for real, I doubt I could have afforded a ticket aboard one in a regular flight - the one-way price between London and New York appears to have been in the realm of £4500 as of 2003 - apparently that's £6,600 in today's money, or let me put that another way - $13,200. Mind you, a quick search says that to fly First Class on a British Airways Jumbo Jet the same distance is a little over £7,000, and £5,300 for Business - £7,000 for a 7.5hr flight, vs £6,600 for a 3 hour flight. Every so often there were cheaper charter flights where you didn't actually go anywhere, but got to fly in Concorde and it would take you up to Mach 2 before returning you back to the airport where you started - they might have been in a closer realm of possibility but still would have been very pricey. For an aircraft that only had 20 examples built, and even then 4 of them were prototypes, it sure made an impact worldwide and was never bettered by anything else. It was a technological marvel - it still is, it pioneered concepts which have since become commonplace in regular modern-day passenger planes, and pioneered things no other plane has needed since because no passenger plane has ever gone as fast to need to build on that technology. Although Concorde never turned a profit for Air France, it certainly did for British Airways and when you look at the economics of the aircraft, you can't help but think there's credence to the suggestion that the pin was pulled on Concorde because Airbus didn't want to support the maintenance on what in essence is an "orphan" aircraft type, and British Airways realised it was more profitable to shove Concorde's clientèle onto existing plane services rather than upkeep a special aircraft for them (with Air France happy to finally drop the aircraft without losing face). Either way, to have been over here in the UK and to have seen Concorde either flying in the skies en route to Heathrow each day or seeing it while waiting for another flight at Heathrow, would have been quite something...
My interests are often wide and varied, but can often be transport related. Sometimes these interests combine a tad, and lead to outings such as the one last Saturday where Sasha and I took a half day trip out into Surrey to the Brooklands Museum. What's the Brookland's Museum? well, a Museum obviously - but a museum of what? A number of things as it turns out - Brooklands was once a famous Motor Racing circuit, with a large banked track made of concrete tiles. Many famous early racing cars raced here, but being a hub of motoring technology and innovation the big grounds in the centre of the circuit meant that the burgeoning British Aviation scene had its roots there as well. So in the first decades of the 20th Century, race cars would zoom around at high speeds around the race track while flimsy bi-planes would slowly lumber into the air. Does that sound a bit familiar? It might do if you've ever watched "Those Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines", as the main airfield in that movie is based on Brooklands. That was something which piqued my interest to visit, but there was something else - Brooklands had a Concorde. I've seen Concordes before, even been in one. But that was an Air France example, and perhaps not surprisingly there's a few of the British Airways Concordes floating around the UK. What particularly drew my interest was the Concorde at Brooklands wasn't just merely displayed, it was part of an experience - you could pay an extra £5 and go inside it, and be taken for a simulated "flight". The flight experience is actually rather well done - you are asked to assemble by a British Airways branded bus, and our "stewardess" met us and asked to see our tickets for the 2.55pm "Flight to New York". Once on the bus, the stewardess gave us a brief history of Brooklands, and also Concorde - I didn't realise it before we came but Brooklands had been home to Vickers Armstrong Aircraft, which became a part of British Aerospace and who co-built the Concorde with the French Aerospatiale. As a consequence, some substantial parts of every Concorde were built at Brooklands. We were then taken on a quick tour underneath the Concorde, where our stewardess explained some of the special features of Concorde's design before it was time to board the plane through the rear door. By the way, although she never said as much I had a strong suspicion from the way she spoke about Concorde (and kept referring to the aircraft as "she") that our stewardess had actually been such aboard Concorde when it was flying. Unless you were crew or a cargo handler, you would never have boarded Concorde through the rear door but as part of the experience, you entered the rear of Concorde into the cabin area which had been turned into a museum gallery of sorts about the Concorde fleet in general, and the specific Concorde plane we were in. Part of the inner wall paneling had been removed showing the metal wall of the aircraft - surprisingly thin, but then most planes are probably like that! The Concorde we were in, G-BBDG or "Delta Golf" was one of the first production Concorde planes (following the Prototypes) and proved Concorde was airworthy and safe to authorities before being relegated to a standby role and eventually a source of spare parts for the BA Concorde fleet. There were models of what Concorde would have looked like in other airline's colours had the 1970's fuel crisis and concerns over the environmental impact of Sonic Booms not scuppered those sales - had other airlines still bought Concorde, Delta Golf would have likely ended up flying for someone like Pan Am. One little tidbit of information which we found funny was that having agreed to build the aircraft as a joint venture and agreed upon the name, it took the British and the French 5 years to agree on whether to use the UK or French spelling of Concord/Concorde, before the British finally ceded to the French spelling. Somewhat ironic, considering Concord/Concorde literally means "agreement"! After a video played about Concorde and its history, we were then led through to the forward part of the cabin where the cabin interior had been recreated using the early 90's style grey seating (the British Concordes had 3 types of seat during its lifetime - an as-built orangy-coloured fabric seat, a grey fabric/leather seat, and lastly a black leather seat fitted around 2000), authentic to the last detail apart from an LCD screen placed above the forward aisle door. We sat down, a video came on and proceeded to pretend that we were actually passengers on Concorde for real. Added to this was realistic sounds of the jet engines, and also vibrations where we were sitting - it felt every bit like we were taxiing to the runway, then speeding along the runway before finally the vibrations stopped but the sounds continued as if we were in the air. In-wall displays at the front of the compartment ticked over as they had in everyday service, pretending to show our height above sea level and how fast we were going - proceeding through the Sound Barrier at Mach 1 (you never hear the boom on the plane, only on the ground) and then up to full speed of Mach 2.02. The only thing that was missing was the champagne and in-flight service! Eventually it was time for us to exit via the front, getting a look into the cockpit in the process. The whole experience was extremely well done. There was more to Brooklands than just the Concorde however, and more than I realised. Since Brooklands was home to Vickers, there were other examples of passenger aircraft produced by the company on display - including a Vickers Viscount, a Vickers Vanguard (in its cargo-era configuration) and two of the large VC10 passenger jets - one which had been the private plane of the Sultan of Oman (complete with gold-covered plush fabrics, even on the toilet seat!) and another fuselage-only which had been a British Airways plane and housed a mini-museum to the type, similar in respect to what we'd just seen aboard Concorde. Although once rather common, British built passenger aircraft are almost non-existent in service now - the one exception is the BAe 146/Avro RJ, the kind of plane Ansett NZ used to fly and even then they are becoming less common. There was also a building which housed an environmental chamber to test the hardiness of aircraft components and other items, named after the engineer and inventor Barnes Wallis who worked for Vickers - and there were also examples of the bombs Barnes Wallis developed during World War 2, including the infamous "Bouncing Bomb" used against Dam's in Europe. Of course, Brooklands started life as a racing car circuit, and so there is a large motor racing element to the museum complex - part of the racing track is preserved (but not restored), and many of the original buildings associated with the motoring side of things remain and house various racing cars, mostly old but some new. In one of these buildings was one of the cars from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the movie (there were 6 in total) - in the movie it was the motorcar that became wrecked and caught fire in the ditch during a race. The real life "Chitty Bang Bang" cars of Count Zborowski (from which the movie and the cars got their inspiration) raced at Brooklands, winning a number of trophies over the years. As an aside, the main car used in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang now belongs to Sir Peter Jackson and is in New Zealand. Also at the site is the London Bus Museum, but we didn't go there. One question I had, which I couldn't find the answer to at Brooklands is why did the motor racing circuit, which clearly seemed to be the epitome of the British motor racing world get abandoned? The answer as it turns out was rather simple - during World War 1, the Brooklands site was given over to wartime aircraft production but after the war the track was refurbished and normal racing resumed. The same thing happened during World War 2, except that in order to deal with the larger planes being produced, parts of the track had to be demolished and after the war there was no appetite to fix the track back up. The site became a huge Aviation centre until the decline of the British Aviation industry in the 1980's and later large tracts of the site were sold off. Its not possible to restore the track as a complete circuit, so the Brooklands Racing Circuit will never return - but the museum is quite a neat place to visit.
So in all, it was a rather pleasant day's outing - and it was only a 20-something minute train journey south from Wimbledon, so it wasn't very far for us to travel but was outside London nonetheless, being in Surrey. I know I didn't research properly what there was to see and do at Brooklands aside from the Concorde, so was pleasantly surprised at what we encountered - I don't think I fully explained to Sasha what to expect from the Concorde side of things, but she was happy enough to come along on the trip and remarked as soon as we hopped off Concorde "I want to fly on one now!", fully aware that Concorde no longer graces the skies. In fact, what we experienced is likely to be the closest we'll ever get to flying in a Concorde - there are people around who seem intent on trying to get an Air France example back in the air (British Airways, who retain ownership of their Concorde's, refuse to entertain the idea) but we shall see if that ever happens. Mind you, as much as I would have liked to have flown in one for real, I doubt I could have afforded a ticket aboard one in a regular flight - the one-way price between London and New York appears to have been in the realm of £4500 as of 2003 - apparently that's £6,600 in today's money, or let me put that another way - $13,200. Mind you, a quick search says that to fly First Class on a British Airways Jumbo Jet the same distance is a little over £7,000, and £5,300 for Business - £7,000 for a 7.5hr flight, vs £6,600 for a 3 hour flight. Every so often there were cheaper charter flights where you didn't actually go anywhere, but got to fly in Concorde and it would take you up to Mach 2 before returning you back to the airport where you started - they might have been in a closer realm of possibility but still would have been very pricey. For an aircraft that only had 20 examples built, and even then 4 of them were prototypes, it sure made an impact worldwide and was never bettered by anything else. It was a technological marvel - it still is, it pioneered concepts which have since become commonplace in regular modern-day passenger planes, and pioneered things no other plane has needed since because no passenger plane has ever gone as fast to need to build on that technology. Although Concorde never turned a profit for Air France, it certainly did for British Airways and when you look at the economics of the aircraft, you can't help but think there's credence to the suggestion that the pin was pulled on Concorde because Airbus didn't want to support the maintenance on what in essence is an "orphan" aircraft type, and British Airways realised it was more profitable to shove Concorde's clientèle onto existing plane services rather than upkeep a special aircraft for them (with Air France happy to finally drop the aircraft without losing face). Either way, to have been over here in the UK and to have seen Concorde either flying in the skies en route to Heathrow each day or seeing it while waiting for another flight at Heathrow, would have been quite something...
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"Would I go back to Sweden? Yes, I'd like to. Will I? I'd like to think so - but I do realise I may not, and if this is my only visit to Sweden then I'd be happy with what I've seen and done. One thing high on my list to try and achieve while I'm over here is the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights - Northern Norway and Sweden is looking more and more like the best place to try and see them from, and the railway in Northern Norway is actually the Swedish railway so I could well imagine that Sweden could be revisited as part of doing that. Of course, that would be winter, when its freezing cold - mind you I'd like to see a snow-covered Stockholm, and see Lake Malaren when its all frozen over with thick ice - that would be quite different! " This was the tailpiece from my blog entry for having visited Stockholm in Sweden, back in May last year (in case you'd like to recap on that trip - you can do so at http://abroaderhorizon.weebly.com/blog/three-days-in-sweden). I have long wanted to see the Aurora - be that the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) or Aurora Australis (Southern Lights). I have never seen the Southern Lights (they were in the sky when I was in Timaru one night - sound asleep in bed, oblivious to the fact they were above!) and activity with them has gotten strong since I've been out of NZ - meaning friends of mine have been able to pull out Southern Lights with their cameras (but not see them with their eyes). I hadn't so far attempted to see them - from memory there was an initial suggestion for an aurora seeking trip not long after I arrived in the UK with Jeremy and Rachel, which eventually evolved into the Canary Islands trip. Sasha wanted to see the Northern Lights as well, and had hoped to see them when she visited Iceland in late March last year - but for all 3 nights she was there, it was cloudy and she didn't see them. So we were both keen to try and see the Northern Lights sometime during the 2015/2016 winter - and agreed that we'd likely need a full week to try and increase the chance of seeing them. There were half-term school holidays right in the middle of February, an ideal time for me to get leave and therefore for us to attempt to see them. As you can see above from the quote, I already had some preconceived ideas how to achieve this having done research on where and when is best and achievable. So I started scoping up various trips based around those, discovering all sorts of possibilities, but also limitations in the process. In the end, it came down to four key destinations for consideration to see the Northern Lights: they were Iceland (where everyone we know seems to go to see them - easy to get to, it runs the risk of cloud due to its coastal nature); Kiruna or Abisko, Sweden - two remote towns which are protected largely from cloud by the ring of mountains which surround them; Tromso, Norway - further north than Kiruna and Abisko so better positioned for aurora viewing, but its more coastal so runs a greater risk of cloud; and Svalbard, Norway - a large Island group far to the north of Norway, and about as close to the North Pole as land gets. Great positioning for aurora viewing, especially as it would still be in Polar Night (24hr darkness), but being an Island it risks being covered in cloud. Finland didn't figure because anywhere with potential was much harder to get to than other places. Greenland is too far away/remote, and Canada also for much the same reasons. Here's a picture which helps explain where's good and where's not. This is a guide which tells you how strong a "kp" rating it has to be in particular areas in order to see the Northern Lights with your eyes. Camera's can always pick out Aurora's more readily than your eyes can but really, you want to see it with your eyes first and foremost.
Creating some "paper study" itineraries was somewhat of a mission. I had hoped to incorporate a few visits to some other places into the itinerary and knock off a few other things, but it quickly became apparent that due to logistics (not everywhere is easily got to, and transport links sometimes don't run every day - especially in the depths of winter) that you either tried to fit in everything and narrowed the time that you would be in the "aurora zone" (our term for areas most likely to see the lights); or you tried to maximise that time at the expense of other things; and there was always the cost to consider in any given scenario. In the end, I came up with 6 basic trip types, each with no less than 2 and as many as 4 variations (giving 18 different trip scenarios with indicative costings). Needless to say, this has been the most intensively looked at trip I've ever scoped, even moreso than my trip to Germany in April last year which kept giving me so much planning grief (that German trip was more frustrating, but not as extensive or intensive as the scoping for this trip!). I would give you a rundown on each of the options (as I tend to do), but this time I won't. Why? well, two reasons - the first being that it would simply take up too much text; while the second is that the end trip was none of the outlined 18 trip scenarios. Yes, that's right - none of them. After Sasha and I went through them all, weighed up the pro's and con's of each trip (and eliminated Iceland and Svalbard), she asked me which of the trips I preferred and I said I didn't know - I liked elements of some, and elements of others but none of them stood out above the others. For Sasha it was the same, so we decided to see if we could cherry-pick the elements we did like and weave a new trip. After working through it for some time, we managed to create a new, better trip that we both liked and felt good about. There would be no Bergen, no Oslo, no "Norway in a Nutshell" (a day trip from Bergen to Norway via Fjords, the Flam Railway and spectacular scenery), no visit to Denmark either; but we would fly into Stockholm in Sweden, spend a few days there before catching the overnight train to Kiruna; Spend two nights there before travelling to Tromso in Norway, effectively having full day there; Before catching a cruise ferry from Tromso to Trondheim through a large proportion of the Norwegian Fjords and spending 3 nights on board, before flying from Trondheim back to London with a stop-off or two on the way. It was as much as a "best of all worlds" trip as we could possibly get - visiting numerous places and seeing a wide variety of scenery, but we would be in the "aurora zone" for 5 to 6 nights out of the total of 9 nights we had to play with. So that was the planning done - we had a trip that would be interesting in itself aside from any potential Northern Lights, while also trying to give us a greater chance of seeing them on any given night. All we could do now is hope that on at least one of the nights, the cloud and aurora might play ball - it was the one thing we could only leave to chance. Would we see them? There was only one way to find out... Day 0 - Flying to StockholmWe worked on Friday, but as soon as it hit 5pm I changed out of my work clothes into my cold weather gear and lugged my things to Clapham Junction. I had tried to take as little with me as possible, as had Sasha but given we were going to experience some very cold temperatures that meant bulky clothes and items so we had bought one checked bag between us - which would be Sasha's big purple backpack. I had misread the Norwegian Air Shuttle cabin baggage policy and had packed my camera bag into my big rucksack (as I often do) as I thought you could take only one bag into the cabin, and had a plastic bag with the extra stuff I needed put in Sasha's backpack. I met Sasha at Clapham Junction, where we travelled to Gatwick on a very overcrowded train (Sasha managed to get on, then other people pushed in and I barely made it on before the doors closed, forcing my way into a non-existent gap with people still trying to get on behind me!). At Gatwick, we re-arranged our packing and I put my stuff into the big purple bag, checked in with the airline, dropped the big bag off and then went through security. I thought I had everything off and sussed, but I set the metal detector off - I had left my belt on! grr. We had dinner at the airport - which after considering various options we decided to go the easy option and had McDonalds. The biggest thing I was looking forward to about our flight was the free internet wifi on board the plane, which is low-cost Norwegian's point of difference. However on this flight I found it rather slow to use (I recall loading Youtube videos when flying to the Canaries on Norwegian, there was no possibility of that this time) and all it was really good for was messaging through Facebook, reading emails or Wikipedia. It honestly felt like I was trying to surf the net using a dial-up modem. After a while I noticed city lights through the window out our side of the plane - one of the things the wifi did was take you to a webpage for the flight where you could see where we were, and it transpired what we were seeing from way above the ground were the city lights of Aalborg in Denmark, and surrounding towns/cities. After a while longer, we approached the Swedish coast and we could see a large city - Gothenburg. We landed at Stockholm's Arlanda Airport on time, with the airport tarmac covered in a thin layer of snow and the trees and land surrounding rather caked in it. We had been hoping for snow, we knew we'd get snow but we weren't sure if we'd find it definitely in Stockholm but here it was! My new ski jacket and snow boots would get their first real test. We took the Arlanda Express train from the airport to the central city (not the cheapest option but by far the easiest), and walked from there the 10 minutes to our Hostel. As it was out of hours, we had to enter a pin code for the door then retrieve our keycards from a safe box with another key before proceeding to our room. We used the lift, which was an unusual type for me - instead of having the usual metal automatic-closing doors or the manual operation "Titanic"-style concertina gates, this just had what looked like an ordinary wooden door to a room. Which it was - the lift itself had no door, you just opened the conventional door and went into the lift, pressed the button and the lift then moved with no barrier between you and the outer doors or wall. Our room was basic, but cozy and functional and had its own ensuite - as it was almost midnight by then, we decided to get some shuteye ahead of the next day's events. Day 1 - Stockholm VenturingOur day started off with us trudging out into central Stockholm, and making a beeline for the Metro station a block away from our accommodation to get day Metro passes in order to get around. We initially tried to acquire them from a machine, but had to go to a booth to get them - and had to purchase the electronic card on which to load the pass as well. This seemed a bit expensive at first - 135 Swedish Krona (SEK) each, or by our rough maths £13.50 ($27) but perhaps not unreasonable - Sydney's day passes are something similar. But having now got them, we didn't want to use them straight away - we wanted breakfast, so we headed another block away to a cafe we'd seen on our walk the night before to the accommodation. Why there? because they'd had these big poofy cream bun things that looked interesting. Hardly healthy, sure - but they were tasty! they were like a big roll that had the top cut off 1/3rd of the way down, and had cream as well as a sugary apple jam in them. We didn't know it at the time, but these are a traditional Scandinavian treat around Lent and Easter time known in Sweden as "Semla". We had coffee's to go with them - Sasha had a Mocha, while I opted for a Chai Latte, something I haven't had for some time and was taken aback somewhat by quite how tasty they can be. After this, it was back into the Metro - we worked out how to use the cards, worked out which Metro train we needed, waited the 2 minutes for it to arrive and then hopped aboard. We were headed for Globen Station, but upon reaching the station at Gamla Stan (Old City) we were able to see a rather impressive view out of the metro station. Making a sudden decision to get off and have a look, we did just that (working out how to exit through the barriers - you don't need to use your card, just walk towards them and they'll move) and walked out onto snow-covered ground right next to the edge of the Gamla Stan and Lake Malaren. As you will have read at the beginning, I was hoping to see a frozen Lake Malaren - people apparently walk on it during the height of winter. The lake wasn't completely frozen over, but right here was a number of fairly large frozen sheets of ice, some of which a bit further out seagulls were perching on. After taking a few photos, I started chucking rocks at the ice sheets, expecting them to be thin surface ice - but the rocks bounced off the tops and either settled on the sheets, or rolled off the edges and I could not break them. Deciding they were fairly sturdy, I decided to try and push one of the sheets - the first one I could not push, and also found its ice was rather thick, about 5-10cm deep at least. An adjacent sheet I was able to move, which I propelled across part of the water until it collided with some other sheets and eventually ended up back where it started. All so much fun though! Having had our fun (we had chucked some snowballs at each other also), we hopped back into the Metro Station, waited 2 minutes for another train and carried on. Our progress to Globen was hampered again when the Metro shot out of the hill and crossed a large viaduct overlooking part of the lake below - it was frozen from bank to bank and looked rather spectacular nestled in the valley. So, at the next station (Gullmarsplan) we hopped off, and wandered around looking for a view from which to get photos. There was no pedestrian way to get onto either of the viaducts, so we went down to the lakeside banks and started walking alongside (careful not to slip on the icy paths along the way!) trying to find a gap in the bare trees for a photo. What we instead found was a small jetty jutting out into the lake, with a sort of hand crane at the end. Sasha found footsteps in the snow that covered the top of the ice, and I took a few photos of her sitting on the wharf with her feet on the ice, and then she stood on the ice but didn't venture away from the wharf, During my turn for photos I decided to follow the path of the footsteps out onto the ice. Nothing disastrous happened at all, and I got to walk on a frozen lake! Sasha then followed suit. Once we'd had our fun, we walked via a different route back to the station, and continued on to Globen station - which was quite literally the next stop! Our reason for going to Globen Station was to visit the Ericsson Globe, and go up in the little goldola-like globes which ride up the outside of the structure. I had originally intended to do this last time, but went up a Tower instead as the Globe was inconvenient for me to get to that time. The Globe is the worlds largest hemispherical building, and is used to represent the Sun in the Swedish Solar System model (which is to scale). We struggled at first to find the place where you bought the tickets to go up on the globe, and wandered into the entrance of some Greek exhibition thing going on before we went round the right side of the building and found it. We got tickets, waited for our turn, and then rode up in the little sphere up to the top of the Globe. The view from this side on the way up was a bit average, but we passed the other gondola sphere on its way back down. At the top, the sphere paused for a couple of minutes, and we got more of a view - however because of a hill in the way, you could barely see the Gamla Stan (which I had suspected would be the case) but the rest of Stockholm was visible. It was a bit cloudy at the time, making the view perhaps less spectacular than it could have been but great nonetheless. We descended, hopped off and worked out our next move - which required going back on the Metro (2 minutes until the train came), and then interchanging to another metro line at one of the stations (this time the wait was 5 minutes!). Once at Skarholmen Metro station, well into Stockholm's South-Western suburbs we walked the 10 minutes to our destination - IKEA. I've never been to IKEA. We don't have IKEA in New Zealand, but it exists in most other countries including Australia and of course the UK. There is an IKEA in Croydon, which isn't terribly far away from my UK flat but despite intentions of going, I have never been. Sasha, who has been to IKEA before, liked the idea of going to IKEA in Sweden and suggested it. I had contemplated visiting it during my last visit to Stockholm - what better way to visit my first IKEA than actually visit one in Sweden, the country where it originated? I didn't have the time last visit, but with Sasha keen for it, we both settled upon it as a must do. We took some photos of the outside, with Sasha spelling out the IKEA letters with her body as I took photos in front of the store and she encouraged me to do the same. I wasn't keen at first, but gave it a go. Then it was time to wander inside this huge building, and ascend the escalator to the 3rd floor (you didn't have a choice - that's the only way to enter the building) and begin the look around as you descend through the building. Except, that's not quite what we did, at least not at first - our plan was to have lunch at the infamous IKEA cafe/restaurant and have the Swedish Meatballs. Sasha suggested we look around the 3rd floor first following the flow of the floor until we naturally reached the cafe, but about 30 seconds into doing this I insisted that we instead go to the cafe now and eat, then afterwards we look around. Because of our stop-offs at the Gamla Stan and walking on the Ice prior to going to the Globe, we'd chewed through some extra time and it was now about 2.30pm - and I was hungry. So, we went to the cafe, and joined a fairly sizeable queue for the cafe. The queue snaked back on itself, it was demarcated by metal railings and there were in fact two queues, one on each side and both were about as full as each other. I noticed people in the queue with some kind of odd trolley/walker/zimmer frame looking thing, and a bit later saw people going to the checkout with these also - but their ones had trays on, these were tray trolleys able to take 3 trays each laden with food, stacked one above the other. A very neat concept! we eventually reached the place where you collect a tray, cutlery and if you want it, a glass from which you can have as much drink as you like. You didn't have to have meatballs - there were other foods available, some very reasonably priced salads, or other hot food but for us it would be meatballs. The question was - how many meatballs? for about 10 SEK/£1 between them, you could choose between 8, 12 or 16 meatballs. Sasha elected to go with 12, while I went 16. Ordering was not a problem, the staff spoke English - I got mine with the traditional mashed potatoes, but Sasha got hers with fries, we each got peas (you didn't get asked, you were just given them), meatball gravy and lingonberry (cowberry) sauce. We paid, found a table, I filled our glasses full of soft drink (Cola - not Coca-Cola, but a generic cola), and we tucked in. The food was rather nice, filling and very well priced I must say - but the thing was the cafe was extremely busy and the line grew ever greater while we were there! had we spent the time to wander around the 3rd floor, we would have joined a much larger queue than we did and would have been waiting even longer. The cafe was also very family friendly - over in one part of it, was a special area with microwaves where you could heat up baby formula or baby food of your own bringing; and there was a playground area, surrounded by a curved wall with a bench and stools attached - parents can eat while keeping an eye on the children in the playground. Having finished my cola, I went and got some more soft drink but this time was keen to try the Lingonberry soda - was nice but a bit too sweet. Lastly, all the pictures in the cafe depicting the drink glasses showed it with a white liquid in it, which a lot of people were having and came from a machine next to the coffee machine. Neither of us had a clue what it might be, we thought perhaps it might be some special Swedish drink - was it fizzy? what did it taste like? we were curious so once I'd finished my drink I went to one of these machines and got a half-glass full. While filling the glass, I noticed that behind the indecipherable text on the machine was a picture of a cow. "So I think I know what the white liquid is now, and I think we're idiots" I said to Sasha as I sat back at the table. "Is it milk?" Sasha replied. "Yes - why didn't we think of that before?" I said. I took a sip - "Yep that's milk", All that time thinking it was some kind of exotic drink, without it even occurring to us that it might be milk! We also had a bite for dessert - some little green oblong with some chocolate on it, that we didn't have a clue what it was. Inside was a kind of tiramasu-almond paste filling - quite rich, too rich for Sasha as it turned out. Now that our hunger had been conquered, it was time to conquer the store. I was very glad that we'd eaten before properly attacking the store, as instead of my focus being on my hunger and getting through the floor so I could eat, I could now properly pay attention to what was in front of us. In short, a lot - we started off on the level with all the beds and sofa's, and quite often there were displays which were in essence fake bedrooms set up to show what it could look like, or even multiple rooms that could very well constitute a small house. The kicker - every single item in those displays was for sale somewhere in the store. If the bed didn't take your fancy, but you liked the storage units that attached to the wall or the lightbulb in the light fitting, or the cutlery and glasses on the dining table? what about the dining table itself? all for sale from IKEA, You kind of descended in a spiral fashion around the outside, then into central floors, then back down a level back to the outside, into the centre, etc. On one level was children's toys - including a lot of soft toys, some very neat and very clever and some were even created from drawings done by children of imaginary animals. The very bottom level was huge, and rather full - this was where you started collecting a lot of the items you had seen, such as the glasses, or plates, or a myriad of other household items. Lightbulbs, light shades (I was a bit taken by the globe lightshade that could either be an enclosed sphere, or opened out into a larger sphere that emitted more light), before you entered a big warehouse-like part where you could collect the flat-pack boxes of the furniture you liked the look of that you'd seen in the displays. All you needed to do was note on a provided card with a provided pencil the items number when you saw it, and when you got to the collections floor just find the number of that item. Its all very cleverly done. Did we buy anything? yes, in fact - a thermos (to keep liquid in that wouldn't easily freeze on our journey ahead) and some Daim chocolates. From a food thing in the checkout concourse, we also got a few more bits and pieces to have on us to eat, as well as some small apple & strawberry drink cartons - as we expected that there would be times when we wouldn't have easy access to food in the days ahead and it might pay to have something else on us. Our original plan after IKEA had been to head to a place we'd heard of that described itself as a Swedish Beer Hall, which was somewhere on our way back - we weren't quite sure where. Sasha looked it up, and we discovered that the prices of the beers and the food was rather up there - probably more than we wanted to pay. A few other beer halls we could find online were about the same, then Sasha stumbled across a Viking-themed restaurant that was in the Gamla Stan, but we couldn't properly tell prices. Might be just as pricey but stuff it, lets head for the Gamla Stan and see if we can find it - if not surely there's somewhere else, and the Gamla Stan itself should be nice to wander around. So that's what we did, and eventually we managed to find the place (after a bit of a false prediction on Sasha's Google Maps as to where it would be, I used the Apple Maps on my phone and we found it further down the street). We walked in, past the coat check lady and into the bar area and saw it was rather full-looking. There were tables down some stairs, and we were asked as we were about to head down them if we were after food or drink. "Both" Sasha replied. "Do you have a booking?" the guy replied. "No" was our reply. "Well, you are very lucky that we have space then" was his reply. "We have a table free until 8.30pm - that gives you an hour and a quarter, if you're happy with that you can have it". That was fine by us, so we were told to check our coats in at the lady before the bar while he got some menus and to meet him back at that spot. Which we did, and then he asked where we were from as we descended the stairs. "Australia and New Zealand" we replied. "Oh really? and what are your names?" "Dan and Sasha" we replied. All of a sudden, the guy faced all the other lower tables and shouted "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! THIS IS DAN AND SASHA, FROM AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND!". We were a bit stunned, but a huge roar of cheering went up from the tables and of course we then felt a bit embarrased. Our table was actually a long bench table - we had two seats at it, and it was clear there would be others who would fill the table also. The atmosphere of the place was rather neat - it seemed rather reminiscent of Viking time, but as we might have expected the food on the menu was slightly on the higher priced side. However, there were some foods listed as "appetisers" which sounded like they might be a bit more than that and they were a more reasonable price. So we got the "Plate from Trogden" (which was a selection of interesting cold meats, and some cheese) and the "Lans aux Meadow's mead and cream boiled mussels" in the smaller size. For drink, they had a selection of craft beers - but they also had Mead, a traditional European alcohol which would have been what Vikings (among many other cultures) drank. They had one variety of Swedish Mead, and quite a number of German varieties. All the drink was a bit pricey, but we were keen to try the Mead - and we decided to splash out and get a whole bottle of the Swedish Mead, as it would work out to 3 drinks each for the price of 2 when compared to buying it by the glass. By the time we ordered, other people had arrived and sat either side of us, and they too had been announced in the same manner as us and we cheered along. The bottle of Mead came, as did the glasses to drink it from - they were glass cones which sat in a metal spiral coil attached to a base and were rather awkward to pick up as the glass wasn't fixed to the metal. In the end, I just picked up the glass part and sat it back in the metal each time. We also got some bread, butter and some kind of large cracker-like shards of something to eat while we waited. Our cutlery was of interest also - heavy and thick, the knife was very sharp for cutting meat, the spoon rather large and solid too but without your usual bend in it - but most of interest was the fork, which was a two-pronged thing that looked every bit from ancient times. A band struck up too, playing some rather traditional looking instruments and music which I can only imagine was traditional. The food came and we ate the mussels first - they were very nice, and then we tucked into the meats. It was now that I realised I didn't know which meat was which - but people next to us got the same, and they asked the waiters so we were able to figure them mostly out from that. We had Reindeer salami, Elk (Moose) salami, slices of Reindeer heart (cured, of course), flat-smoked pork, lamb steak and cheddar cheese. There was also sausages, which we ate first and I overhead the description as "boar" from the waiter; which figured as it tasted not too dissimilar from your average beef/pork sausage, just with a bit of extra flavour to it. However re-reading the menu now online, I see it actually says "bear" sausage, not "boar". So not only did we eat Reindeer and Moose/Elk, but also Bear. We didn't have dessert - there wasn't time and we were full enough from what we'd eaten and drank, so we wandered back out into the Gamla Stan and walked along the Old City streets for a while, working our way towards the eastern waterfront and in front of the King's Palace. Here we found a big pile of clumped snow, next to a partially disassembled ramp - me in particular started picking up large chunks of the frozen balls of snow and chucked them into the nearby water, and watched them splash and then float away. It was lightly snowing powder snow, and along one side of the Palace we noticed the snow had been piled up and then levelled off and groomed along a street. From next to the Swedish Parliament building, we watched sheets of ice like I had pushed earlier in the day make their way through the channel past the Parliament Island, always breaking into smaller pieces when they either struck the bridge piers or encountered the turbulent waters beneath the bridge. Walking through the city again and taking photos along the way, we ended up back at our accommodation and called it a night - it had been quite some day! Day 2 - Strolling Around StockholmWe had a full day in Stockholm this day, but had to check out of our accommodation. This saw us pack up our things and lug all our bags to the Stockholm Central Railway station - we were catching a night train from here later this evening and they also had storage lockers, so it made sense to deposit our bags there. We found a large locker, paid the 90 SEK/£9 for the day's storage and went back into the station concourse. It was now late morning, and we'd yet to have breakfast - there were food places around the concourse, some of them fast-food places (Burker King & McDonalds for instance) but one was something Swedish and I wanted to just have a look out of interest. It had not been my intention in the slightest to eat breakfast/brunch from there, but that's what ended up happening - called Svenska Klassiker, they served burgers and fries mostly, and we ordered two "Kycklingburgare" as it was about the only thing on the menu in Swedish and we didn't know what kind of meat it was - it wasn't beef, or pork, we knew that much. Turns out kyckling is chicken - we had two chicken burgers, which I must say were rather tasty and the chips covered with seasoned chicken salt. Not exactly healthy, but it did the trick! From the station we wandered back towards the Gamla Stan, taking in a lot of the same sights we'd seen the day before but now in the daylight. The groomed snow by the Palace? turns out it was part of a track for a ski-slope using the Palace's large side ramp. We visited a few of the souvenir shops, getting ourselves some things - for me, it was Postcards and also a Dala Horse. During my last visit I was very much shocked by how expensive Dala Horses, a traditional Swedish souvenir made of wood, were. However this one shop had a fairly decent sized one on special at a reasonable price and I figured why not. Afterwards on our walk up towards the other side of the Palace and across to the opposite side of the Gamla Stan, we had to walk around a crowd who were awkwardly standing and talking amongst themselves across the entire footpath and cobbled road. As we were moving around the side of them, there was a huge yelling booming voice from behind us - and I immediately yanked Sasha away from the road. A group of guardsman then marched past with their rifles over their shoulders - it took me a moment to realise what they'd yelled had been "MAKE WAY FOR THE KINGS GUARD!". Never heard them marching up behind us and it never looked like the group standing awkwardly were waiting and watching for them! we followed the Guards up to the Palace and watched the changing of the guards, but most of it took place out of sight and it wasn't that entertaining/interesting. Walking back across to the main city, we saw a lot of ducks and Swans gathering in a corner in the icy water feeding - and we noticed some of the ducks looked rather unusual to us, as did some of the Swans. The ducks in question were black, with a white flank either side and a tuft of hair on the back of its head (a species which I have since learned is called quite simply "The Tufted Duck"); while the odd Swans, which were acting rather aggressively we worked out were actually Geese. We then embarked on the walk to the Djurgarden, Stockholm's rather large garden and museum Island, along the waterfront before stopping at a Cafe/Restaurant I had been to during my last visit for coffee's to warm up against the cold. It was essentially lunchtime, but we didn't get food - instead our brunch tided us over for that, the coffee's just being a nice break. Afterwards we began the walk around some of the Djurgarden's paths, staying close to the river/lakeside edge which became frozen over further up. Everything was white, apart from the occasional building - very much a contrast since the last time I had been there, but very magical because of it! we cut a path across the island at one point, visited a garden area with some statues and a windmill and then proceeded along the other shoreline towards more of the museum area. In doing so, we passed the Abba Museum - somewhere we'd considered visiting but had decided before even getting there that we wouldn't go to, but Sasha and I did pose with one of those cut-out faces boards individually and have our photos taken by each other (Sasha's being far better than mine!) before we cut through a graveyard and visited the Vasa Museum, arriving there about 4pm. I had been to this museum before - Sasha wanted to visit, and I was not going to say no because the Vasa is rather incredible. It is an early 17th century ship which sank on its maiden voyage, which basically didn't rot in the ocean, was salvaged in the 1960's and then has been preserved and displayed in a climate-controlled museum. That climate controlling started playing havoc with our cameras - having been exposed to the cold for all of the day so far, our lenses and sensor mirrors fogged up in the warm museum, preventing us from taking photos at first. That didn't matter so much - we could watch the 20min video about the Vasa's creation, sinking, and then salvage in the meantime. Afterwards though neither of our camera's had adequately warmed up and de-fogged, so while wandering around we attempted to speed up or circumvent the process by holding them against ourselves for warmth, and also swapping out lenses and airing them. This latter bit did work, and we were able to get some good photos of this incredible archaeological treasure before the museum closed at 5pm. An hour wasn't enough time to do the entire museum, and we'd known that - but we'd seen all the important stuff, and Sasha seemed happy with what she'd managed to see. By now it was starting to get dark, and we'd decided to go back to the same place we'd had coffee at (called Sjocafeet) and have dinner as the prices there had been reasonable, and as I'd eaten there before I knew the food was good. In fact, despite a fairly wide selection of food available we opted for the meatballs - the same dish I'd had the last time I ate there! We also got some beers - Sasha isn't a big beer drinker but felt like one on this occasion and had sampled some of the beers on tap and had gotten a recommendation for the Abro Original, so she had that. I opted for the Abro Pilsner, which must be what I had last time (its a fairly easy going, nothing too special type of beer), and for the second round Sasha got another Original while I opted for the Golden Ale, which was rather pleasant although again easy going and nothing too special). We ended up being the last ones in the restaurant by the time we left, which must have been about 7-7.30pm - I guess Sunday nights aren't a busy night in that part of Stockholm! We wandered back in the general direction of the main station, but took a bit of a detour along a rather nice lit pathway in a park area and stumbled across an open air skating rink. It was the kind where you didn't have to pay to go on the ice, and you couldn't hire skates - there was no-one in charge of it, it was just like a public playground where you took your own skates to and skated to your hearts content on the ice. It wasn't busy, and we sat and watched the skaters - we were rather impressed by a girl dressed in a grey tracksuit who was skating and dancing on the ice to whatever music she was listening to, not to any proscribed routine but moving with the music and spinning, jumping, skating backwards, and doing so while artfully avoiding everyone else. Some guy not too far away from us began to show off, largely in the sight of this girl by spinning in one spot on his skates non-stop - but ended up losing his footing and fell on the ice! Eventually we carried on back to the station, retrieved our bags and waited for some time in the station concourse before deciding to head to the platform to await our train. I had hoped that our overnight train might originate in Stockholm and that it would be at the platform already so we could board earlier, but when we got to the platform there was no train and we had to wait for a while (turns out it begins its run in Gothenburg). Eventually it did arrive, we made our way to Carriage 27 and found the compartment with seats 22 and 24. There were two overnight trains for us to choose from when booking - one which left at 4.00pm and would take us all the way to Kiruna (arriving about 9.30am), or one at 10.40pm at night which we'd have to change trains in Boden and arrive in Kiruna about 3.00pm. We'd opted for the latter train, simply because we'd get more time in Stockholm; we'd see more scenery in the daylight vs the other train; and as it turned out, we could book a 1st Class sleeping compartment to ourselves with ensuite for £4 more than a 2nd class compartment with no ensuite (1st class not being available on the earlier train). I've slept in communal train sleeping compartments before, and I've slept in private ones - but never have I had one that also had an ensuite. It wasn't a huge place, but it was cozy and it would do - once we'd sorted out just where to put our bags so we wouldn't trip over them. I had made Sasha take some of our money and buy us some food supplies from the Supermarket at the station just in case we didn't have access to any food the next day - it was a bit unfair to make her do this rather than me, but I just could not figure out what might be good and what might not be. Sasha had come back with some wraps and pita bread sandwiches which contained ingredients which wouldn't easily spoil (something I hadn't thought of) and a punnet of strawberries. As we took off out of Stockholm, we consumed the strawberries, took our snow boots off and made ourselves at home in the compartment while we reflected on our time in Stockholm - and the adventure still ahead of us. One of my not-so-bright ideas was I wanted to check out the cafe/restaurant car, just so we knew where to go in the morning. I was certain it was either the next car along or the car beyond that, so Sasha decided to come along too and since it wasn't far she'd stay barefoot. The doors between the cars were hard to open, and the cars had metal gangways in the concertina area between cars - a bit cold on Sasha's feet, but we weren't going far. Or so I thought - turns out the cafe/restaurant car was 5 or 6 cars forwards from our sleeping car, and as each new car we came across wasn't the restaurant car the scowl on Sasha's face turned ever more deadly. Upon reaching the car we were after, Sasha announced that having come all that way we'd better be buying something from it - which was fair enough! we settled upon getting these mini-pizza things that were quickly microwaved up, and we ate in the cafe car while I was glowered at by Sasha. They were nice enough, but nothing special and once that was over, it was time to begin the trek back to our car. Which we did, and having got there Sasha went straight past our compartment. "Hey this is our room here" I called out, to which Sasha replied "I know" and kept walking - I knew what she was doing, she was going to see if the next car along was a cafe/restaurant car. It wasn't, it was another sleeping car, but we walked the length of it and found another car, which also wasn't a cafe. Sasha stayed in the previous car while I walked the length of this car (a compartment car with presumably 6 fold down bunks in each), and found that there was yet another car beyond that - but it too was not a cafe car. Reporting back, we then went back to our compartment and eventually settled in for the night once we'd worked out how to turn the compartment into night mode and get my bunk down in place. Day 3 - Spectacular Snow, Spectacular SkyWe awoke and pulled our curtain back, to find a lovely blue-sky day outside and a landscape absolutely blanketed in snow. So much snow, all of it rather thick and covering what mostly seemed to be forest, interspersed by the occasional lake (completely frozen over and covered in snow, of course). Once we had showered in the ensuite of our compartment (the train rode rather smooth, most unlike typical NZ trains so showering on the train was not unlike showering anywhere else) and dressed, we put on our footwear and headed to the cafe/restaurant car for our free breakfast (included as a part of our 1st Class ticket). Breakfast was a bit interesting - we had the choice of one of two wrap-type things (can't remember what was in either of them, it was mostly a few bacon-like meats and mayonnaise), a yoghurt smoothie drink (either wildberry or strawberry & vanilla - at least I'm pretty sure thats what they were), a hot drink of either coffee, tea or hot chocolate and last but not least, a boiled egg still in its shell. It was a tad odd, but it was rather nice and worked well - the most tricky part was trying to shell the egg and dealing with the shell pieces. While in the cafe car, there was an electronic map showing our progress and the time - the time being a good 8 minutes faster than that on our phones. Not thinking much of it, we went back to our compartment, changed it back into day mode and waited for our arrival into Boden. Prior to arriving at Boden some announcements came over saying that the train was running behind time by about 15-20 minutes, and that for those connecting with the train to Narvik at Boden there was no restaurant car on board that train. That was our train they were talking about, but we had supplies - we would be fine. Our arrival at Boden came, we hopped off onto a snow-covered platform and waited at the adjacent side of the platform for the next train - our waiting time out in the cold conveniently shortened by our delay. Not that it seemed too cold outside, it certainly wasn't bitterly so. Before long a 3-car train arrived, we hopped in our carriage, found our seats and settled in for the 4-hour journey ahead. It was rather warm on the train - that's the problem when its sub-0 outside and the train is at a warm temperature, you can't adequately clothe yourself to cope with the extremes and I was starting to overheat somewhat in my thermals. The sky was a bit cloudy by this stage and Sasha started becoming a bit anxious, as cloud would mean lesser chance of seeing the Northern Lights that night. I mentioned we'd been travelling near the coast, but we would now be diving back inland and the skies should clear as a result. So it turned out to be, the skies got bluer again and the snow got thicker. We ate our lunch Sasha had bought the night before on the train, the food lasting quite well and being rather tasty to boot. Somewhere, around the halfway mark during this journey we crossed into the Arctic Circle, the point where everything north will experience either 24hrs of darkness in winter or 24hrs of daylight in summer. By the time we arrived at Kiruna a bit after 3pm, the sun was darkening off but it was still light enough for us to make the trek to our accommodation. Only problem - we'd failed to look up how to get there from the train station ahead of time, and our cellular internet wasn't working in Kiruna. To compound this, Kiruna was the only place on our trip where I hadn't been able to download an offline map for. There was a map on a lamp post near the station, which didn't have our accommodation but it looked like we could walk towards the centre and hopefully get some coverage there, and the town wasn't big so it shouldn't be a huge walk. This did mean trudging through the snow-covered streets carrying our big bags, which slowed us down more than we perhaps thought. Finding footpaths next to the snow-covered streets was hard and sometimes impossible, and there was a couple of times where we almost lost our footing too. Eventually we managed to find our way to the Information Centre, arriving there about 3.50pm - it had taken us a good half an hour to trudge from the station. What was also important - the Information Centre closed at 4.00pm. We wasted no time going inside, and going to the counter. First things first was not to find out where our Hotel was. If there was one thing on our trip that we'd neglected to actually plan, that was any kind of tours while we were to be in Kiruna or Tromso - more specifically, we had not booked ourselves any kind of Northern Lights tour. We'd wanted to, we'd looked up a bunch but we never had a chance to go through them all, work out which ones we liked the look of or sound of and book anything. We'd decided in the end to sort it when we were there, after all we'd have two nights in Kiruna for instance to try and look at the nights - if we couldn't get on a tour the first night, we'd surely be able to the next night. Except, it wasn't going to work out like that - Sasha had mentioned earlier in the day that the weather forecast said tonight would be really clear, but the next night cloudy. I had looked up the Aurora forecast that morning and had seen that tonight was supposed to be decently strong - reaching kp5/G1, while the following night it wasn't supposed to go over kp3. Our best chance to see the aurora while in Kiruna would be that night, so our first order of business at the Information Centre was to see if there were any tours that still had spaces on them for tonight. The lady asked what kind of tour were we after - because there were many different kinds, you can have a traditional Sami dinner under the nights sky, you can ride husky-pulled sleds under the night sky, ride snowmobiles under the night sky and hopefully see the aurora at the same time. I leaped in, and said that we'd preferably like a tour where we could take photos of the aurora - not necessarily one of the "hard out" expeditions, but just something where we might get the opportunity to do so. The lady recommended one that she'd done and had learned how to take photos of the aurora from, which sounded good and had some traditional Sami elements to it also. It sounded perfect, so the lady called the place up to see if there was still space (just before ringing, she was interrupted by another phonecall she had to deal with - clock is ticking!) and eventually came back and said they had two spaces left. Did we want to book? the answer was, of course, a resounding Yes. We paid, and were told we would be collected from our Hotel at 7.30pm. With that all locked in and sorted, we got ourselves a free local map, and used that to guide ourselves to our Hotel and checked in. Having got the key for our room (strangely enough the same room number we had in Stockholm!) we took all our gear up to the room, took our bags off, opened them up and let everything explode (okay, so we didn't have huge amounts of stuff, but by now we weren't so caring whether we made a mess!). We had roughly 3 hours before we would be picked up, so we came up with a plan to wander around the town, get dinner supplies from the supermarket and make it ourselves in the hostel part's kitchen. While doing this, we heard a rattle of a key in a lock and the door to our room was opened - someone had the wrong room, they apologised and closed the door. We initially thought we'd just forgotten to lock it, but as we were closing our room's door on our way out one of the staff asked to see what room key we had - and it sounded like the staff member who checked us in might have muddled some of the rooms up, but that didn't matter as both rooms were the same type and they would just give the other room to the other person. To combat any potential slipping of our feet like we'd had earlier on our way up (and to a limited extent in Stockholm), we were deploying our cramp-ons for our boots for the first time. Jeremy had told us (and Rachel had illustrated on Facebook with many photos) about how he kept slipping in the snow and ice while in Tromso, and after a few days bought cramp-ons which fit over your boots and eliminate the problem. We'd bought ours before we left the UK, and I have to say I felt much more secure in my steps - they certainly made a big difference for Sasha. The only downside of the cramp-ons is when you go indoors - your boots make a particular click-clack sound and it can't be good for the floors, as after all the cramp-ons have pointy bits of metal poking out of the rubber for grip. So we click-clacked our way around the supermarket, deciding to get one of those same kinds of mini-pizza's we'd had on the train, and use a salad counter to assemble our very own custom salad which we could share. Back to the accommodation, down to the Hostel kitchen and we microwaved the pizza and assembled the salad onto plates, and sat at a table and ate dinner. To top it off, we got two cans of some local variety of energy drink to keep us awake for the night ahead - it was cheaper than Red Bull, and came in a variety of flavours. Sasha's ended up being a "flat" kind of juice and mine was your more typical "sparkling", but both were fruit-flavoured and tasted not bad. We also discussed before the tour whether we'd use our own cameras or the ones provided by the tour - we were both inclined to use our own cameras. Kiruna was cold - about -5 or -6 when we arrived, and would be about -10 by the time we'd venture out on our tour and we could expect it to get colder. We knew we'd get given some boots and extra clothing by our tour company but we dressed as warmly as we could, before heading downstairs to await the van just before 7.20pm. The van was already there with a lady, who had been waiting about 10 minutes and asked if we'd been told 7.20pm or 7.30pm for our pickup. 7.30pm we'd replied, and it was now we both noticed the clock on the van was a good 8-10 minutes faster than our phones - just like that clock on the train. For whatever reason, Sweden seemed to be 8ish minutes fast and so I manually changed the time on my phone to match. We picked up two more people from another place, and then went to another hotel almost on the edge of Kiruna where the van stopped and we were told we'd meet the others inside, and also get set up in the Hotel's lounge area. We helped carry a number of bags and camera bags inside, and sat down with the the rest of our group on some couches (we numbered 8 in total - the capacity of the van). Our van driver introduced herself - her name was Anette, she was of Sami descent and she would be our guide this evening. She re-iterated that while we hoped to see the Northern Lights tonight, there was no guarantee but the signs were promising. She asked us all one by one if we had ever used a proper camera before, and if so what kind of camera we had. It was about 50/50 in our group whether we'd used a DSLR before, not that it would matter much as the tour supplied a Canon 700D camera and a 10-14mm lens to go with it. All we had to do was use our own SD card (if we didn't have one, we could purchase one from them). As we went through how to use the camera step by step, Sasha mentioned that she would use their camera gear rather than her own, as it was better and more set up for the capturing of the Aurora than her own (which is a Canon 650D in case you're wondering). I had already resolved that I was going to use both theirs and mine - because why not? I also loaned Sasha one of my spare SD cards, as she was going to use the one from her own camera otherwise. We then put the cameras away, got given our snow boots (heftier and warmer than our own!), snow pants (Sasha and I elected to just use our own as they seemed much the same, and Anette agreed they should be fine), a head torch, and a Poncho that we were to wear over our jackets if we felt cold. We were also asked if anyone had any difficulties walking - there were 3 locations we could go to but the first choice spot required a 300m trek through the snow. We were a group of people aged probably somewhere from mid-20's to mid-to-late 30's, walking wasn't a problem for any of us and so we were all given a hi-viz vest as well. Once we were geared up, we all hopped into the van and we drove about 20 minutes out of Kiruna to a spot on the side of the road. Once we'd all hopped out of the van and collected our tripods in addition, we crossed the road and set our along the trail. Part way along the trail, we stopped and were told the temperature at the spot, the Aurora Lake would be somewhere around -18 to -20 degrees and what to do if you started getting too cold - and what to do if you dropped your glove in the snow, make sure you whack off any snow before putting your glove on. Also, there were reindeer tracks in the area so please don't make loud noises and be considerate of the reindeer. We then trudged through bush and I guess forest, some people stepping into holes in the snow and falling over, down to the edge of the lake where a Sami teepee tent was - we were there at the Aurora Lake. In front of us was a big expanse of white snow, with trees dotted around the edge. We could set up anywhere we liked on the snow, but we were told to try and set up in a line so we wouldn't get in each other's way. There were frozen over tracks in the snow from where people had been before, so we largely followed these - and found that if we didn't, we tended to fall down deep into the snow. Sasha and I set up along the left hand arm of the group, our tripods sinking down a way until they stabilised. I got everything out for the provided camera and was all set to put my camera on top of my tripod when I realised it was no longer around my neck where I had placed it - where had it gone? I found it in a pile of snow next to the camera bag, something I had done had flicked it off of me into the freezing snow! I hurriedly pulled it out of the snow, brushed the snow off and cleaned the front of the lens using one of my lens cloths and attached it to the tripod. Getting all of this all set up was awkward wearing my snow gloves, and so it was easier to take a glove off, fiddle with what I needed and then put it back on to warm up - I think everyone else was doing the same. As we were setting up, I peered into the sky wondering where best I should point the camera and noticed a faint line through the sky of a very slight green tinge - ooooh, that was it! that's the Aurora! its faint, but its there and I can just see it with my eyes! I went over to Sasha all excited as she was still setting up, and pointed it out to her - her response was "Is it going to get brighter?". I didn't know the answer to that, but I knew what we were seeing would be enough to be brought up in the photos we were about to take. It would have been just before 9.00pm when we started reeling off the first of our shots on the cameras, and sure enough we could pick up the aurora in them. It started getting a bit stronger behind a line of trees to our centre-right, and that's where we focused a lot of our early attention. We were photographing the Aurora! Sasha soon picked up that her photos seemed like they were a tad fuzzy all of a sudden, and we discovered her manual focus wasn't quite set on the right spot - which we soon fixed, and we both continued to blaze away, experimenting a little with the settings - in my case, usually longer exposures. After a while I got out my own camera and mounted it next to my other one, and started shooting with that. With the provided 700D's on the tripods, the whole rig was solid enough that you could press the trigger with your hands and take the photo, with no camera shake resulting. On my camera though I didn't feel like I would get away with the same, so set up the remote trigger button - the cable of which kind of froze in place partially curled which was interesting. The Aurora got brighter, and Sasha chose to move right down the right end of the group to get more photos. At one stage, my 700D played up and I suddenly found despite turning it off and on again, I couldn't get it to take photos - I'd press the trigger, and almost straight away the rear LCD screen would light up blank but all the settings looked correct. I had to go find Anette and ask for her help once she was finished assisting some of the group take photos of themselves with the Aurora, and in doing so I found a patch of ground where others had been that seemed ever so slightly slushy. It was only about now that I realised we weren't just at the Aurora Lake, but on the Aurora Lake - the snow was knee-high on top of the ice on the lake. not just ground! On the one hand, at least I knew I couldn't sink into the snow up to my waist or worse - but if that bit was slushy, how solid was the ice? I decided I didn't want to head back down that part again (but in hindsight, the slush was probably just created by someone standing there for some time and had melted the snow on top of the ice in the process). Anette came over and saw immediately what the problem was - whereas I'd been using a 30 second exposure, it had jumped to 1/30th of a second and with an adjustment, I was back in business. Not long after Sasha came over saying her hands were freezing and they weren't warming up and she wasn't sure what to do. I had thought of such a scenario, and had come prepared - I pulled out a packet of some sachets which are supposed to heat up when exposed to the air and stuck one in each of Sasha's gloves. At first they didn't seem like they were doing anything to me, but later on Sasha said they were doing the job rather well. Later, Sasha and I took turns with Sasha's camera to have self portraits with the aurora in the background, and in the process we activated a setting that instead of being a 10-second timer, started taking photos every 10 seconds for 10 photos! Later Anette came over (unsolicited) and took a photo of the both of us under the aurora. Meanwhile, the Aurora continued to move about, and was very bright - and could be seen very easily with the eye. Sometime later Anette asked whether I'd prefer tea or coffee as she was going to set up the kettle in the Sami tent, but I indicated I didn't want anything just yet - and I think it was a good 30 minutes or more before we finally tore ourselves away from the Aurora and the cameras to go in the tent. The Aurora was just showing show after show after show, and I wasn't feeling the least bit cold except for my hands somewhat - I didn't even need the poncho we'd been given just in case. However in the tent, it was a relief to be able to warm up my hands next to the fire and against the tea cup as Anette told us Sami legend stories including one about a boy who yelled bad things at the Northern Lights and they picked him up and took him far away, making his walk back home very long and he never yelled at them again. After we'd finished our tea, Anette said that we were welcome to go back and take photos for another half an hour or so and then we'd head back to the van. I was pretty satisfied with what I'd taken, and upon getting back to my cameras I found the 700D's lens front frosted over somehow. My own Nikon D5000 camera was covered in a very thin layer of frost although not on the lens, but I decided I would call the photo side of things quits and spend the rest of the 30mins actually watching and taking in the aurora show. Sasha had noticed just before going in the tent that some of the photos she was looking back through weren't displaying - it seemed like there was some kind of reading fault, so we decided it would be best not to use the card any further and she packed up as well. The aurora by this time was really moving around, dancing - dancing is such an apt term, smaller beams were sprinkling themselves down from the sky and moving around while the bigger, brighter bits would move more slowly but still move and twist in their shape. They slowly moved right over our heads - which would have made it very difficult to photograph from where everyone's cameras were set up, but the others were still out there trying and so now was Anette with her own camera. No-one else packed up their cameras until the aurora had basically gone out of sight above the trees, and I'm pretty sure that was far longer than half an hour from when we'd finished up from the tent! Once everyone was packed up, we trudged back through the snow towards the van - Sasha walking in front of me, managed to step into one of the holes in the snow and couldn't get back up easy. The only thing I could do, with my hands also very full was grab her by her bag strap and try and haul her up as much as I could. Just before we got to the vans, we were told to be quiet - there was a herd of Reindeer near us, which I could barely see but you could mostly hear. Once back at the van, Anette went down the road and shooed the Reindeer away from the roadway, we loaded everything back into the van, the van got turned around and then we headed back to Kiruna. Sasha and I had been the first to be picked up, and we were the last to be dropped off, and on the way to our hotel I asked Anette was it usual to see such a vibrant, dancing show light that in the night's sky. She said that you only get a show that bright and that active about 2-3 times a month - you usually see the green in the sky to varying degrees, but it often didn't move and dance around like we saw. It was well after midnight when Anette dropped us off back at our Hotel, but we had had one hell of a night - and we could now rest easy for the rest of the trip, because we'd just ticked off the big major item that we'd come on this trip to try and see - the Northern Lights. And what a show it had been! Day 4 - Snowy KirunaAs a part of our accommodation in Kiruna, we got free breakfast which turned out to be a big buffet of hot food such as scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages and baked beans, as well as cold meats and cheeses, breads and salad-y items along with cereal options. We decided to be cheeky but practical, and from the breads, meats and cheeses assemble a sandwich which to take with us for lunch instead of buying it later on. Today we had a full day in Kiruna, a day in which we weren't sure what we were going to do - we'd thought about booking on a dog-sled tour or something else, but we didn't strongly feel the want or need to and so instead decided we'd wander around Kiruna and see what there was to see in this small mining town, and have our own fun in the snow. Which, after visiting the Information Centre to get postcards, is exactly what we did when we happened upon a playground. This was like no playground I've ever seen before - everything was made of snow and ice. There was a fort made of snow, with clear ice windows set in it, two slides with snow sides (one had a maze leading to the slide) and ice for the actual slide itself, amongst other things. Sasha decided she wanted to pose on the slide so I started taking photos, just as she found herself sliding down the slide thanks to ice and gravity! we both played on each of the two slides, and then ended up across the road in a park where there had been some snow sculptures made, and I made my very first snow angel in the deep snow - it was oddly comfortable. Sasha made one too nearby, but her snow patch was a little deeper and she ended up with snow on her face and she also needed help getting back up! we ended up having lunch near that spot on a park bench under a shelter, having our sandwiches we'd made at breakfast and drinking some of the apple & strawberry drinks we'd got from the IKEA (after putting them in the snow to get cold for about 10 minutes). After our lunch, we continued walking around and taking photos until we came across an actual playground, and decided we'd play on a swing set for a while. I got the bright idea that I could swing myself very high and then launch myself into the deep snow - but utterly botched the launch and ended up on my side just in front of the swing, Sasha struggling to hold her phone which was videoing still while laughing uncontrollably. Sasha later attempted the same, with a slightly better but not too dissimilar result. We then decided to set off in the direction of the Kiruna Cathedral, which looking at the pictures on the map looked fairly impressive but which we hadn't seen yet during our time in the town. We found the town hall, we found the bus station (which had a rocket plinthed nearby - seems there's some kind of Rocketry space program based near Kiruna) and a house which was having a huge amount of snow being cleared off the roof. Sasha wanted to try climbing up some rather snow-covered stairs to see if she could, which she managed to successfully negotiate her way to the top - only to then find that there was no path to follow at the top. I followed up the stairs, saw what she meant - there was just a huge continuous stretch of what would have been knee-deep snow, so I said we should just slide back down and walk along the road instead. So I literally slid down the stairs on my bottom - the snow formed a slide underneath me making a nice smooth run to the bottom, and Sasha followed suit. Up past the fire station, we eventually walked up to, around, and into the Kiruna Cathedral which is built in a style of a Lapp house and is a timber building coloured in the typical red/brown stain colour of old Scandinavian buildings (although it was only built in the early 1900s). After this, not really keen to walk all the way out to the new town centre (the city is literally shifting 4 miles down the road - more on that later), not really sure of what to do and feeling a bit worn out, we decided we should head back to the accommodation. Going halfway down one of the paths from the Cathedral, we suddenly realised we could see our accommodation across the road and across a carpark expanse - the Cathedral was literally within a close line of sight with our accommodation. How did we not notice it before? Sasha had a theory that you couldn't see it from the entrance we kept using, but we found that wasn't true. Quite simply, we must just have never looked in that direction! We were a bit worn out from all that walking and playing in the snow, and had a nap for a while before heading down to the bar area of the hotel. When I say bar area, it wasn't so much a bar - the hotel was a bit odd, in that the reception counter was also the bar, in front of the counter was a reception/lounge area, and next to the counter was a kind of deli. in front of the deli counter with its cheeses and meats, was some tables and chairs (the big table in the middle had been where the breakfast buffet had been placed), around to the side was a small room which sold foods, pots and pans and other food-related household items or specialty foods; and through an adjacent door, was a fairly small room which was more of the restaurant. So we sat in the reception/lounge area, and asked for the cocktails menu as there had been a sign out the other entrance to the restaurant that they had a large cocktail menu. The menu we had been given was just the ordinary dinner menu, so I went back and asked again (someone else this time), who replied that they didn't do cocktails but they had a good bartender on who would be able to make up whatever we wanted - and handed me a specific drinks menu. There, on the first page were 3 cocktails! I guess maybe Cocktails is not a word the Swedish hear very often or they don't get many queries for them at this particular venue. We opted for Martini's as out of the 3 that's what Sasha felt most like, and I had never had one so was interested to try. It was a very "adult" drink, very sophisticated but I also learned that although its James Bond's drink of choice, you should never shake it as it bruises the gin and makes it weak. We found a Swedish quiz game that had questions on a series of cards, and we asked each other the various questions on the cards about Sweden - I learned that Primus was a Swedish brand name, not just a type of camping stove; Tetrapak is Swedish, as is Husqvarna, H&M and Scania; and that a lot of Swedish Kings were named Gustav. We did also peruse the menu, but we had already decided that we were going to go to another restaurant that we'd seen for dinner. At the Landstroms Kok & Bar, we had a rather nice dinner where Sasha got finely sliced strips of Elk (Moose) with mushrooms, lingonberries and potato mash; I got a fillet of Reindeer, which also came with Reindeer sausage, lingonberries, mashed potato and a kind of pastry filled with "Vasterbotten" cheese. Although we'd previously had it, this was the first real chance to pick up on the actual distinct flavour of Reindeer and Moose - unsurprisingly, Reindeer tastes like Deer and is just as gamy; to me the Moose was much more muted, kinda like beef but with a slightly stronger taste. For drink, Sasha had a cider while I had the craft specialty beer on tap (which was a Pale Ale - fairly nice) and for dessert, we got a Cloudberry Compote to share. I'd never seen or heard of cloudberries as far as I had known, and Sasha said they looked like little oranges but tasted tomato-like. This is very apt and exactly what it looked and tasted like, which added a slightly odd but not un-nice contrast to the vanilla ice cream and waffle. It was all very nice, although the main room of the restaurant (not where we were sitting!) became rather full at one stage and seemed to stretch the staff, which is why it took us forever to get the bill - in the end we gave up waiting at the seat, and went to the counter and stand there to get it and pay for it. After all this, we walked up to the Cathedral again just to see if we could see any hint of the aurora in the cloudy sky (the Cathedral being the darkest nearby spot in the town), and we could just see a faint trail. Back to the accommodation, grabbed our camera gear and back out to the snow by the Cathedral - although I am certain we saw one or two other traces of the aurora, while there, we could not capture it on camera due to all the light pollution from the town lights around us and the website said the aurora was on the wane at that time and at the strength it was sinking to, probably wouldn't be visible in Kiruna at all in 30mins - so not worth travelling to where it was properly dark. We got a few night photos of the Cathedral, but nothing of the aurora for our efforts before calling it a night. Day 5 - Crossing BordersAfter breakfast at the Hotel (and again sneaking away sandwiches to have later on in the day), we packed the last of our things, checked out and began the walk to the Kiruna railway station. This time it was downhill, much easier than the time before and we arrived with a bit of time to spare before our train arrived. This train was the 4pm sleeper train from Stockholm, and it still had its sleeping cars attached although our seats were in the carriage with the cafe counter - a much more limited arrangement than what we'd had on our sleeper train a few nights earlier. In due course our train departed the mining town of Kiruna, a place that had been rather pleasant to stay although might be very different if we were ever to visit again as its shifting 4 miles down the road. Yes, virtually the entire town is shifting 4 miles down the road. Why? Kiruna is a mining town, with a significant Iron Ore deposit mined there. It just so happens that a lot of the town is sitting on that very deposit, so in order to mine it they are shifting the town out of the way. In this day in age it seems rather incredulous that they'd actually do that, but when the entire town and people's livelihoods are dependent on that Ore being mined long term, I suppose they don't mind so much shifting 4 miles down the road to ensure that future generations will have jobs in Kiruna. All of that Iron Ore is taken by train from Kiruna to Narvik, a port town in adjacent Norway and it was this very railway line which we were about to travel on - and consequently, we were bidding farewell to Sweden. The train worked its way higher towards some mountains, past Lake Abisko and Abisko itself (with the hill where the Abisko Aurora Sky Station was located, being shrouded in cloud at the time - but the top was probably above the cloud) and we continued through little settlements all the way up further into the mountains, stopping every so often to pass Iron Ore trains and passing through snow sheds which were like tunnels but specifically built to keep the snow from piling up on the tracks at those locations. We eventually reached a place called Riksgransen, which we didn't really know at the time but this was essentially the border between Sweden and Norway - due to Schengen (which Norway is a part of, even though they are not a part of the EU) we would seamlessly pass between the two countries without a passport check. From here though, the scenery became rather more dramatic. It had to - we had been climbing and climbing into mountains yet we'd been getting closer and closer to the coast - something had to give and drop us down to Narvik at sea level. The train route started coursing through very tall valleys along the sides of mountains, with views of frozen waterfalls on the opposite valley sides, and eventually one of these valleys turned into a fjord with the water at the bottom frozen, and then it wasn't frozen - the water a very navy blue colour. After a while, you could see where the fjord joined more water and before long, we arrived in Narvik - we were in Norway. Narvik was just a transit stop for all intents and purposes, on our way to Tromso. From here we would be catching a bus, but we would have a near 3-hour wait for the bus as we simply didn't have enough time to get from the train station to the bus station to catch it after arrival (I'd tried so hard to find a way for us to catch it, but it wasn't going to be possible), so we took things quietly and knew we had plenty of time to relax. We headed towards the bus station anyway, as there was a big mall there so we knew we could at least wait indoors and be entertained. On our walk there though, I suddenly looked up at one point and saw a bus stopped outside a building in the block ahead - No.100, with Tromso as the destination. That was the bus, the earlier bus and it looked as if it was boarding passengers at another stop! I mentioned this to Sasha, but there was a problem - Sasha needed to visit the bathroom, and the bus ride was 4.5hrs long. We needed to find out a) whether it was possible to catch this earlier bus, and b) if there was time for Sasha to quickly use a bathroom and then get on board. There were actually 2 buses, and the bus driver for the 2nd bus was approaching his bus so we asked him when they were leaving - he replied any moment now, as they were already late. It seemed we could still get on, but we explained our predicament and he said no, there wouldn't be enough time to visit a bathroom and come back - but the bus does have a toilet on board. Sold - we were directed to the first bus, and as Sasha stood in the queue behind another couple to pay for our tickets I took the big purple bag off of her, found the side baggage locker open, chucked the bag in the locker and hopped on the bus. We found some seats on the left hand side of the bus in the 2nd row - piled our stuff in and away the bus went, some 20 minutes late on its schedule. Sasha had asked about the onboard toilet, but the driver had said it was broken - but the bus was stopping in half an hour and she could use the bathroom at that place. So we barely even saw Narvik in the end, not that there had been much to do there but we were both happy to be on the earlier bus. Not only would we get to Tromso far earlier, we'd be making the journey in largely daylight and the 2nd bus driver had mentioned bad weather was on the way and likely to delay that later bus. We settled in, decided it was lunch time and were glad that we had our sandwiches that we'd made up at breakfast that morning to eat - it pays to have food on you just in case while travelling, you never know what's going to happen! At the next stop, Sasha went to the bathroom while I decided to chuck my black bag (which I'd had on my lap, it was too big for the overhead rack) under the bus with the purple bag. The 2nd bus driver was there helping put other people's bags in the locker underneath, and I asked him if bags to Tromso should be in that locker or the one on the other side - the other side was the answer, so we shifted the purple bag and my black bag round to that side (at least then I knew our bags would make it to the right destination!). Up until that point, we'd been skirting various waterfront bays and it had been a little windy but from here we climbed into hills and left the sea behind. We stopped at little towns every so often, maybe once every 20mins or half an hour to pick up and drop off people and about 3.30pm in the afternoon the bus stopped for a leg stretch and to change drivers. Somewhere along the way our bus had gotten full and the 2nd bus had started taking the overflow, but from this stop onwards the 2nd bus was ahead of the 1st bus. Our new driver was only doing announcements in just Norwegian and not English as well, unlike the last driver but our stop in Tromso Central should be fairly obvious I thought. Eventually as it was starting to get dark, we stopped at a stop at a town called Nordkjosbotn and the driver made an announcement (in Norwegian) and some people started getting off, and others didn't. Not knowing what was going on, I figured if we needed to know, they would tell us. At one point the 2nd driver came onto the bus and talked to the new driver, and just after that the new driver asked us in English if we were going to Tromso Central or the Airport. We said Central - he then told us we needed to get off and wait for another bus that was coming, it would take us to Tromso Central and would be here soon. So we started gathering our things, while a couple behind us asked us what we'd been told and they said they were going to Central too but didn't know if they should get off the bus also. We got off, grabbed our bags from the locker (as did another lady) and she headed for the 2nd bus parked further over. Our bus driver had told us to wait for another bus which would come - which would seem to indicate it wasn't the 2nd bus - but we were somewhat confused as to what was going on so we headed over to the 2nd bus and asked the driver if we should get on his bus. The answer was yes, and he helped us put our bags under the bus before we hopped on and sat in the last two seats which were completely free. We had no idea why we had to change buses, I can only think it was because the buses had been late and they were trying to get one bus with the passengers going to the airport quicker by bypassing central Tromso. However I felt much more at ease on the 2nd bus as the driver had been helping us on our journey right from the word go, he knew where we were going and I was sure he had our back so to speak. We arrived into Tromso Central a little before 6pm - a bit later than it was supposed to arrive, but much earlier than we would have had we caught that later bus. We couldn't rest up yet - we had to get from the bus station to our accommodation. It was a few blocks away, we knew that, but it turns out the path was uphill and also while Kiruna was covered in powder snow, Tromso was very much melting snow that had re-frozen and just straight ice. Already I could see why Jeremy kept slipping on the ice in Tromso. With our cramp-ons packed deep in our luggage, going uphill on slippery ice was not easy, especially for Sasha who's boots tended to be more slippery than mine. We did fine, though I almost wiped out on the driveway up to our accommodation. We checked in, dumped our bags, and retrieved our cramp-ons for our venture out into Tromso to find a place for dinner. This turned out to be no easy task - there was not a surfeit of places to choose from, most were well fancy and consequently very pricey; another place we saw was too cafe-like, and in the end we ended up along by the waterfront near a Peppe's Pizza we'd seen from the bus. We did see a pub/restaurant-like place round the corner called Kaia, and checked out its menu - it had some things on the menu we liked the look of, but we thought we'd see what the prices were like at the Pizza place in comparison as the pub/restaurant still wasn't "normal prices" as far as we were concerned. We went to the Pizza place (which claimed to have Pizza's from 50 NOK/£5 in the window), saw the actual menu, saw that 50 NOK was for a large slice of pizza and that actual pizza's started around the 210 NOK/£21 mark, and promptly went back to Kaia. We found a seat, studied the menu and decided we both liked the look of the King Crab - the price was not too bad considering everything else either. Noting they had the local Mack brewery's beers, we toyed with ordering some beer but in the end decided to try their cider - we were planning on visiting the brewery the next day so we could try the beers then. Only problem is, they had 3 ciders to choose from and the descriptions were all in Norwegian - we guessed what they might mean, and ended up ordering the only 2 ciders they had on hand at the time - myself and Sasha both choosing what we thought we'd like best. When they came, we tasted both of them, and ended up swapping our choices between us! The crab was good too - I cannot say for certain whether I've ever had actual crab (as opposed to the fake "surimi" crab), surely I must have but never have I eaten it straight out of parts of the legs or shells. I rather liked it, and once our pleasant meal was over we walked along the waterfront for a while and then headed back to our accommodation. Tromso was cloudy, and the Aurora forecast a bit lousy anyway so doubly no chance of seeing it so we called it a night. Day 6 - The Northernmost DayAlthough we had a full day and much of the night ahead of us in Tromso, we wouldn't be staying at our accommodation the next night so after having breakfast from our supplies on hand, we packed up our stuff and checked out - but were able to store our luggage at the reception for the day. Now burdened of our heavy load, we started to wander around Tromso on this cloudy day and decided to make our way towards the big bridge which crosses the waterway that separates the two main halves of the city, see the Arctic Cathedral on the other side and go up the Gondola (or Cable Car as they call it) to see the snowy view of Tromso from afar. We weren't wearing our cramp-ons as we felt we could get away without wearing them, although we did have a few moments where we lost grip for a second before we started walking over the long, arched bridge. The walk across the bridge was fine, although as we got closer to the other side we noticed a distinct lack of activity on the Gondola - I then looked it up online and found it was closed during winter. None of the tourist literature that we had said it was closed during the winter months! never mind - we could still see the Arctic Cathedral, which is labelled as the most northerly cathedral in the world (not sure how strictly true that is, information seems a bit scarce on the matter). It is a rather striking A-framed building, built in the 1960's and it costs 40 NOK/£4 to visit inside it. We didn't go inside (its not a big building) and we could see inside from the glass windows at the front, but the front area did afford a rather convenient viewing spot to get some photos of Tromso from. They also do night-time concerts at this Cathedral, and there would be some that night - but it would be too difficult for us to attend due to catching the ferry that night. We did have a little more of a wander around looking to see if there was somewhere to get lunch from, but established there wasn't so went back across the bridge and happened upon the cafe-like place from the night before. While not appealing for dinner the previous night, it certainly appealed now for lunch! we wandered inside, ended up getting two Tomato soups which were a lot more than we bargained for - a big bowl of Tomato soup, with sliced egg wedges in the centre of the soup, and freshly toasted thick bread strips. This was quite substantial and good value at 55 NOK/£5.50 each I thought, especially considering the prices of everything else food wise in Norway so far. We then proceeded to wander around the rest of Tromso, including visiting the square where we'd seen an ice/snow sculpture competition taking place earlier. By now, a lot of the sculptures were more fully formed - the Owl looked practically finished, the Swedish team were starting to hollow out a hole in their globe, and the team from Thailand were getting very intricately into the detail on their elephants. We headed in the direction of the Mack Brewery, and upon finding it went in and purchased tickets for the tour at 3.30pm and a quick browse around the shop. We still had at least an hour or so before the tour started, so we went back out into the cold and walked further along the street, until we came to the end of the city and then slowly made our way back along the waterfront, taking photos along the way. During this time, one of the Hurtigruten ferries arrived in Tromso (announcing itself with 3 loud blasts on the ships horn), this being the northern bound ship that day. Walking around the waterfront was slightly precarious at times - there was a lot of ice, and much potential for falling over without our cramp-ons. By the time we wandered back to the Mack Brewery, it was getting close to Tour time so we looked further around the shop, and noted that they sold not just their own beer (in both bottled and canned form) but beers from other breweries too - and not just in Norway, but from all around Europe. I guess the shop is one of the local importers of various beers. Eventually it was tour time, and we were taken from the shop to a room to watch a 20min movie about the history of the Mack Brewery. In a nutshell, the brewery was started by the son of a German baker who was appalled at how the people of Tromso (a busy and wealthy port in those days) were consuming so much alcohol, and wondered if he could curb their alcoholism by getting them to drink beer with its lower alcohol volume instead! The brewery has been family run ever since, through good times and bad and managed to survive through the prohibition era by producing fizzy drink instead. In recent times it ended up outgrowing the inner-Tromso site, and the actual brewery is now in Nordkjosbotn (where we'd had to switch buses the previous day) while the old brewery site has been partly retained for the bar, a microbrewery and also the tours and shop. The room we were watching the movie in was once a cool store cellar, used to keep the beer cool by putting ice in there - production used to only take place in the winter when the ice was around and plentiful in supply! We were then taken into another room, where we were given a sample of their Isbjorn beer - a Pale Lager, which we were told had been a staple product for many years but had been discontinued after Mack had changed from long neck bottles to short neck bottles, and people stopped buying it complaining that the beer didn't taste the same anymore. After about 10 years out of production, a Facebook campaign (much along the lines of the Choco-ade biscuits or George Pie) urged Mack to restart production a few years ago, which they did. Our tour guide then talked about relocating the brewery to Nordkjosbotn, and the changes and efficiency that has brought to their operation. A couple of things particularly caught my interest during this part of the talk. Firstly, our tour guide explained how they used to recycle all the plastic bottles they produced (as they produce bottled water and also the Coca-Cola range of soft drinks for Norway) but now they produce one-use bottles like the rest of the world and its much more environmentally friendly (as well as cost effective). This sounds anathema at first glance - how can stopping recycling be good for the environment? However, this was explained - instead of producing a thick bottle, collecting all the bottles after their use from wherever, shipping them back to Tromso, testing, cleaning & sanitizing them and then re-filling them; now, they produce a thin PET-style bottle (basically your normal soft drink bottle) from what looks like a plastic test tube with a screw cap, heating and blowing hot air into the plastic until it forms to the particular mould, fill them and they get shipped to the shops. Once the bottles are used, people take them to machines in the supermarket (a common thing amongst some European countries) where they receive discount vouchers off their supermarket purchase, and the bottles end up going to a wholesale plastics recycler. So now, the amount of little test-tube bottles that can be delivered to the brewery by a single truck is the same amount as 13 trucks worth of the older, thicker bottles and there's no extra overheads from inspecting and cleaning the bottles (plus no use of chemicals to wash the bottles with). An interesting take on environmentalism, and I can see where they're coming from - less trucks (which always burn diesel) pumping out harmful exhaust, plus the recycling is left to a plant which has a much better scale and efficiency and then all that plastic goes into clothing and all manner of other things. The other thing which our guide then talked about was using recyclable plastic kegs, versus the old steel re-useable ones. She showed us two 30 litre examples, one which was spherical in shape and another more traditional-shaped cylinder but both used clear plastic. I was all armed with my question of whether they had any issues with light strike shipping beer in these see-through plastic kegs, until our guide explained that there was a silver-coloured bag inside that the beer itself went into inside of the clear plastic and protected it from the light. Once used, the kegs can be 'deflated' and crushed and sent away for recycling - no more steel kegs being "lost" and used as wharf pontoons or anything. Also being plastic, they are much lighter than the steel ones and much easier to pick up and handle. As someone who once had a summer job handling kegs off of pallets and putting them on a filling line, I can appreciate that! We were also told about the hops they use and the barley's - they used hops from all over, NZ even being mentioned. We were then taken into the Microbrewery part, where we got to sample one of the small-scale craft beers produced there called "Good Girls" which is an American Pale Ale - a tasting of one of the Microbrewery beers is not usually a part of the tour so we were lucky in that regard. There is a very musical theme to the Microbrewery - not only have they given their tanks the names of musicians (complete with a picture) instead of numbers, but they note what music they listened to when brewing that batch of beer. Once it is bottled, there is a QR code on the label where you can find out what songs were played during the brewing of the beer you are drinking! a bit novel. Once we were done in the Microbrewery, the tour was over - we were then taken next door to the Olhallen Pub (Olhallen translating to "Beer Hall" in Norwegian!) which was the Mack pub and we were able to use our tokens to get a sample of Mack beer of our choosing from a selection of about 12 beers from the standard range. Sasha and I had paid a little extra for our Tour ticket and gotten an extra sample token. We sat down and sampled our drinks in the busy, but atmospheric pub. Once we had sampled our two samples, we decided to nip back into the store and get some bottles of beer and also a bar of the Mack Dark Chocolate (which is Raspberry and Hop flavoured!). After, we went back to the Olhallan, managed to claim the same table we'd previously sat at, and Sasha went to get the beer menu and also the food menu - the Olhallan being rated online as one of the best food and drink places in Tromso. She came back with the beer menu, but no food menu - they didn't do food, it turns out the "Food and Drink" category on Tripadvisor can contain places that do just drink and just food, not just places that did both! Nevertheless we decided we wanted to have at least one or two more beers. You could get them in 180mm sampler size, 300ml or 500ml sized glasses and there were over 50 beers on tap - though not all of them were Mack produced beers (they maybe accounted for 20ish of them). We settled upon getting 3 sampler sized glasses each and went up to the bar to order. Sasha ordered by stating a beer she'd had of theirs that she liked, and was after 3 similar in overall taste/style but was happy for a range of dark and light beers. A bit of a tough ask, but one the lady behind the bar rose to admirably. My choice was done differently, as I chose directly from the menu - getting the Saison (was originally tossing up between that and the Belgian Whit, but when Sasha got that I opted for the Saison), the Arctic Sour Beer and the Kein Unsinn - all 6 beers that we'd got were made in the microbrewery. We tasted all of our beers, Sasha's were nice while mine were more out there and challenging. The Saison was a very nice Belgian-style beer, its notes listing is as "accompanying seafood, salad, the beach, the pub, the cabin, skiing or the FA Cup Final from '72". After finishing that, next up was the Arctic Sour. The drinks menu's blurb for this beer started off by saying "This beer is not for everyone" and that is quite true. According to the rest of the notes, instead of adding the Mack Yeast, they left a bucket of wort in a cellar and let wild yeast attack it, combined it with the rest of the wort and left it in an open vessel for a couple of weeks. Three months later - a really sour beer. Really sour - but in its own way, pleasantly so but the taste was rather "specific" and I've never had any other beer like it before. Last up was the Kein Unsinn, apparently a traditional German style beer with 96% smokey malts called a Rauchbier. It was rather full bodied but also nice, I quite enjoyed it. Once we'd had our beers, we posed with a Polar Bear they had in the bar and then ventured out into the dark. We had no real clue what to do for dinner, and in the end decided to just visit the Burger King. We had time to kill and so spent a bit of time there using the free wifi. After a while, Sasha went and got a refill of her soft drink cup from the drinks machine, and I followed shortly after and as I did so the lady that had served us tapped me on the shoulder and said that there were no refills - pointed to a sign on the machine (behind the bit where you stick the cups so not at eye level) and that we'd have to pay for our extra drinks. At 30 NOK/£3 a cup, that wasn't a cheap drink but it gave us the perfect excuse to stay longer in the BK and while away our time for another hour or so until we decided it was time to retrieve our bags from the accommodation (where we spent about 30mins in their lounge sorting out our packing and retrieving our cramp-ons), before then proceeding down to the waterfront where the Hurtigruten ferry would berth and pick us up. There was no terminal, and no waiting room - we sat on a bench just outside a hotel out of the freezing wind. Our tickets said our ferry would depart at 1.30am and to be at the wharf 45mins before departure,(so 12.45am) however I had managed to find the ferry timetable online and saw that the ferry would arrive at 11.45pm at the wharf. Sure enough, at the appointed time the MS Nordkapp arrived and berthed at the wharf. Our "home" for the next couple of days, it was a fairly decent sized ship - roughly Arahura-sized but with extra decks on top. We watched as it tied up alongside us, and then two doors opened in the side of the ship and unfurled themselves into a set of stairs and a ramp (for cars) respectively. A pile of passengers walked off the ship and headed to some nearby buses (on a side trip to the Arctic Cathedral concert) and then we were able to walk up the stairs and into the ship, being confronted by reception area not too dissimilar to that of a Hotel. We checked in, just as you would a Hotel as well - we were even given the option of upgrading to a plusher cabin (offered to us at 3000 NOK/£300 instead of 8000 NOK/£800) but we declined, knowing the cabin we had booked should suffice. We were each given a room key card, with our individual names on them, where we were boarding, where we were departing and what room number we were in. We made our way to Deck 6, found our cabin and made ourselves at home in the place where we would spend the next 3 nights. When booking we'd selected a cabin with a window as we thought that might be more pleasant than one without, but we couldn't figure out why some cabins in that category were cheaper and why others weren't when the descriptions were all the same - so naturally we went for a cheaper one. It wasn't until after the booking confirmation that we spotted a note saying some cabins may have their window view obscured. Yes, our window looked out onto the lifeboat deck but in a stroke of luck, we were the window directly between the two lifeboats giving a slightly, but relatively unobscured view. Not ready for sleep yet, I quickly tested the ability to leave and re-board the ship using my card and grabbing some photos of the ship and Tromso from the wharf in the process; you were free to come and go as you pleased during any of the stops it seemed. Once back on board, not ready for bed Sasha and I had an explore around the ship, ending up in the Polar Observation Lounge and decided to sit in some of the comfy seats facing forward to watch our departure from Tromso from. These seats were rather comfortable, and at 1.30am Nordkapp moved away from the wharf and we left Tromso, heading for more Fjords further south. We sat and watched as we quietly moved between snow-draped fjords under heavily clouded skies - no chance of Aurora viewing tonight - before I started overheating in my thermals and we called it a night. Day 7 - Fjordin'I think I had a decent night's sleep, and must have dozed until I heard a quiet, but distinct announcement saying the ship would soon be berthing in Harstad and would anybody booked on the excursion please assemble in the reception lobby. I thought the announcement must have come from a speaker outside our cabin somewhere, but Sasha pointed out it came from the telephone mounted between the two beds. Breakfast was between 7am and 10am in the main restaurant, so we made sure we didn't sleep in too late to take advantage of the provided meal. We had to scan our cards before going in, and once in there was a extensive buffet breakfast to choose from. We grabbed a plate of cooked breakfast foods, a drink of Orange juice and went to find a table. The back section of the restaurant lounge was cordoned off and there was no individual tables as such, and most of the completely empty tables had "Reserved" signs on them - Sasha ended up making a beeline to an unoccupied round table and was about to sit down when I told her not to, and to come away from it. "Why can't we sit there?" she asked. "See the sign in the middle" I said, "Oh!" was her reply when she saw the sign that said "Captain's Table" - probably not a good idea to sit there! (especially since about 5mins late the Captain himself and a few crew sat down at that table for their breakfast). I plonked us on the end of a nearby table which was occupied at the window end, but sat 3 on each side and had some kind of ornamental divider between our bit at the end and the rest of the table - effectively separating a 6-person table into a 2-person and 4-person table. Figuring this would likely be our main meal for the day, we decided to eat up - Sasha went and got a plate of fruit, while I went and custom mixed my own muesli and piled berry yoghurt on it. We also grabbed what was labelled as a "health shot" - some kind of pink liquid, in which a lot of pureed fruit bits had settled to the bottom. We stirred the Health Shot before drinking - it wasn't that pleasant, but it sure tasted healthy! Sasha suggested that perhaps we should make sandwiches out of the breads, cold meat and cheeses that were on offer like we had previously - so we did, and snuck them out in the pockets of my hoodie, athough when we got near the staircase Sasha noted an older couple had done the same and also taken some fruit - and were not trying to hide it in any way! We had showers after breakfast, and I tackled with how to turn my bed back into a couch so we could use the cabin in "Day mode". Some while later there was an announcement that today's "scenic feature" would be visible and if you were interested to assemble on the outdoor deck on Deck 7. Nordkapp, unbeknownst to us at the time, is one of about 3 or 4 medium-sized ships in the Hurtigruten fleet to a similar design but is the only one of those to have an Expedition Team - and even then, the Expedition Team is only new to the vessel as of January 2016. The 2 or 3 largest ferries have Expedition Teams, who run extra excursions over and above the normal excursions, point out various sights of interest, arrange extra lectures and activities on board. So we went up with our cameras, where a crowd was already gathered and one of the Expedition Team aboard Nordkapp was giving an explanation of the history and significance of the particular area. I wasn't paying proper attention to what he was saying, except that whales can be spotted in the area during the right season - I was more taken by the scenery. We were also approaching Risoyhamn, a place where we'd be stopping - but for a scant 15 minutes! During the actual stop at Risoyhamn, we migrated back inside out of the cold and took up residence in the Observation lounge, once again managing to get seats at the front. From here, we sat and watched the scenery go by as we chartered through more fjords and also using the free wifi every so often. It was quite a sight really - you kept coursing through never-ended snow-covered landscape in amongst hills, the sky partially blue but peppered with clouds but the sun did manage to shine through a lot. As we approached a bridge at Sortland, there was an announcement that we would soon be passing under it and if you wanted to assemble at the outside part at the front of Deck 5 to wave to buses as we passed beneath. We stayed put, but as we crossed under the bridge we saw a bus which had been pulled off to one side of the bridge start to cross and when it reached the bridge apex, our ship gave 3 blasts on the horn. This bus soon met us at the wharf in Sortland - it was a busload of passengers who had gotten off at Harstad, had been off doing something else but as a consequence had missed out on all the spectacular scenery we'd just been through. If these were the sorts of passengers who were doing the full there-and-back cruise, they still missed out because on the northbound leg what we'd just been through is done in the night! A while after departing from Sortland we headed back to our cabin to have lunch, and then decided we might go spend some time up in the bar lounge - perhaps enjoying a beverage. The selection of beers and ciders were a bit standard - mostly your International beers and nothing local - so we in the end decided we'd opt for cocktails, a Martini for me and a Long Island Iced Tea for Sasha. They weren't great - my Martini wasn't as nice as the last one I'd had, and Sasha reckoned the bartender had added too much Vermouth. However we watched the scenery go by while we sipped them, and there were a number of announcements saying we were going to be slightly late into the next stop of Stokmarknes and as a consequence the tickets they were selling for the "Museum shore excursion" were discounted (but they didn't call out a price, nor mention any more detail about the museum). Out of curiosity I googled to see what the museum was in Stokmarknes, and found out it was Hurtigruten's own museum - including one of the old Hurtigruten ships on display. The stop in Stokmarknes was supposed to be an hour, but by the time we arrived there was about 45mins before departure again and Sasha and I decided we'd stretch our legs and get some photos. Going towards the museum and trying to get decent photos of the preserved ship proved futile, so we went and got some of our ship at the wharf (and in my sandshoes, I managed to finally slip up on the ice and fall over - thankfully out of sight of Sasha, who didn't realise I had done so until I told her!). Back on the ship, the front seats in the Observation lounge were all full but some at the side were free so we sat there for the 3 hours until we got to Svolvaer. We discovered though that the side seats, although looking very much like the front ones, were not as comfortable - they were missing a lower back cushion the front ones had. The weather took a turn for the worse along the next stretch, which in many ways was a pity as we started making our way through some very narrow fjords. They made an announcement that as we would soon be nearing the Trollfjord, a mug of Troll Tea would be available on the back deck as well as pancakes and jam - and you could keep the special mug. That's literally what they said, so we hopped out to the back deck, saw them getting set up and then noticed a little sign saying the Tea and mug would be 99 NOK/£9.90 and the pancakes were 35 NO/£3.50. Hmm, no we didn't need some tea (which by the looks of things was standard tea with a nip of liqueur in it) or pancakes at that price! Although a ferry journey, this is a cruise as well after all so such things were to be expected really. Back inside to some seats along the same side, and we watched the ever closer walls of the fjord pass by us. At one point a lady dressed as a Troll came around the lounge - the most amusing part was where an older gentleman was so intent on taking a photo out the window with his iPad that he didn't see the Troll lady standing next to him watching him, till he was reviewing the photos and she made a noise - his startled jump was rather something! During this time we were also told due to the bad weather the ship would not be making the detour to the Trollfjord's mouth. The stop at Svolvaer was 2 hours long, so we figured why not go ashore and get ourselves some dinner there - the alternative was either paying about 400 NOK/£40 each for a 2-course meal (or more, for more courses) or buying food from the onboard cafeteria at lesser prices, but a bit of variety couldn't hurt. I did some research using the wifi and found a pizza place that sounded good - and the reviews said you could get a large pizza to share at a reasonable, and even then it would be too much food. Sounded like us! so upon arrival, while some passengers disembarked to go on a shore excursion to where they would visit the fishing part of the village - a kind of A-frame scaffolding made of wood, where fish were hung to dry or cure. After a slight initial difficulty, we found the Pizza restaurant and got a table. The guy who sat us down and took our order was very friendly - we ended up ordering a large pizza that was half "Svolvaer Special" and half "Kebab Pizza" and two glasses of the house Red wine, which for the only red they had on offer was actually really good. When the Pizza came, it took up the whole width of the table - it was massive, and the guy who brought it out jokingly said it was a small! It had been cut not into slices but into squares, not that we could tell that at first! it was a huge amount of food but I managed to finish off my share and I think Sasha might have managed to finish hers. It was a bit too much food really, but it had been among the best pizza I've ever eaten out anywhere - and in Norway, of all places! When I went to pay, the waiter was very interested to know where we were from with our "unusual" accents - and in the process learned that "Kiwi" was the short-hand term for a New Zealander. The staff there were brilliant, the food was brilliant and the drink was also. Afterwards we had a little wander around and I tried to get some photos of the town and our ship using my camera and tripod, largely unsuccessfully in the wind and spots of rain. We boarded, found some of the good seats at the front in the darkened Observation lounge, and proceeded to sit there and partially snooze as we departed Svolvaer. However for the first time on our journey so far, ride aboard the ship got a bit choppy as we skirted along the coast of the Lofoten Islands. It seemed a decent, but reasonable level of choppiness not unlike one would find in the Cook Strait, but I discovered when I stood up and walked at one stage that it was rather difficult to do so and I was quite out of practice with walking on a ship. We both found that slouching down in the chairs made the motion seem less, and that sitting up felt more like a continuous rollercoaster. I knew it wasn't the worst I'd ever experienced - that was a 4.5hr crossing of Cook Strait on Arahura one day, but I got the sense that it was getting on par with it - we just didn't have the slamming feeling coursing through the ship nor the heavy wave spray hitting the lounge windows. It was however uncomfortable for a number of people, including Sasha who found it almost impossible to stand let alone walk - to be fair it was a bit unsafe to walk, one of the times I walked I got caught off-guard during a lurch and was nearly thrown into someone sitting in a chair, But our next port call was 1.5hrs after leaving Svolvaer so that would give us some respite and I reassured Sasha of that. During this time, a Spanish-speaking lady had moved from one seat to one near us, and fell asleep but she suddenly woke up at one point breathing heavily. Knowing what was likely to come, I waited to hear her try and make a dash for the bathrooms or the sick bags at the back of the boat, but she didn't - and threw up into her hands, and then onto the floor. Twice. Someone brought her a sick bag, but she didn't throw up any more - nor did she make an attempt to visit the bathroom to clean herself up, nor shift at all from her seat. Luckily, our stuff nor ourselves were near the firing line and the gentleman who was sitting near her and talking in spanish to her after didn't seem to be bothered. Eventually as we neared the time we were supposed to be arriving at Stamsund, I spotted where I thought we might head to and head between some marker lights. We seemed to lumber slowly though, Sasha had a pressing need to visit the bathroom and it seemed like weren't making any progress. All of a sudden, the ride got worse - but I knew this was a good sign as we were making a turn, the turn towards the marker lights and once through them at the harbour entrance, it should become calm. As we started going through the markers I stood up and noticed it was easy to stand - I told Sasha it was safe to walk and to go to the bathroom while I gathered our things. After the bathroom visit, we headed to the cabin and called it a night - I knew from Stamsund we would be making a dash across a more-open stretch of water to Bodo and it was likely we'd have some of that rolling motion overnight. Lying down it would be more bearable, plus we'd be in the relative comfort and safety of our cabin. The day's story doesn't quite end there however - we'd been keeping tabs on the weather and Aurora still, and although the weather was cloudy and not great most of the evening according to the weather info somewhere after midnight the skies should clear. The Aurora was supposed to be kp3 - so we set an alarm for 12.30am, and when the alarm went off I put on some clothes and shoes, but not my jacket and went for a quick dash up to Deck 7. Staring into the sky I initially couldn't see much, then I noticed a crowd all over at one point of the back deck. Why were they all there, up at this time of night? Then I saw it - a faintish green line across the sky, off the rear-starboard side of the ship. I raced back inside, told Sasha I could see it and I started gathering my gear. Sasha got up out of bed, stood up, took a few steps then sat back on the bed - the rolling motion that was going on was too much for her to be able to deal with and she decided to pass up going outside. I still went, made my way out the back of Deck 5 where I knew it would be darker and less crowded, and set up my camera and tripod next to a guy using a gorilla-pod on the deck railing to try and get photos of the Aurora. Taking photos on a boat moving up and down in the swells wasn't easy, but I managed to get some photos which weren't too bad - and after 10-15 minutes out there, it had waned quite a lot. I knew if I waited, it would come back but I was happy with what I had, I wouldn't be able to get any better and besides it was rather cold out on deck! Back inside and just as I was hopping back into bed, an announcement came over the phone that the Northern Lights were now visible off the back of the ship. I guess I managed to beat the crowds! for me though, it was back to sleep. Day 8 - More Fjordin'We got up and showered, and while Sasha was in the shower I suddenly spotted another Hurtigruten ferry (a larger one) passing us out the window against the backdrop of the fjord mountains so I raced out quickly to get a photo or two. Then it was breakfast, where we pretty much did the same again - cooked breakfast, followed by fruit or cereal with a health shot (it was a green/yellow colour and more pleasant this day), and then sandwich assembly for lunch before we went back to the cabin. We knew at some point we'd cross the Polar Circle - and a little while later, there was an announcement that there would be a Circle Crossing ceremony up on deck (and that it wouldn't involve ice this time!). So Sasha and I went up, saw the marker for crossing the Arctic Circle, the ship let off a blast on the horn and then the Expedition team told us all to line up and get a spoonful of "Neptune's mixture" from the Captain. There were actually two lines, one with the Captain and one with one of the Expedition Team dishing out spoonfuls of this liquid from bottles - I shepherded Sasha in front of me in the line for the Captain, because you really want it from the Captain if you can! When it was our turn, Sasha was handed a spoon by the Captain and then he poured the liquid from the bottle onto the Spoon and Sasha drank/ate it. Then it was my turn, and I did the same. It didn't taste that bad actually and we both remarked as much - either the Captain or one of the Expedition Team overheard us and said "See? not so bad huh!". It tasted a bit like some kind of fish oil (it was actually Cod Liver Oil), and didn't taste too unlike the oil the Sprotes tin we'd had in Riga. The Expedition Team had announced that to wash the taste down you could have a glass of Champagne and to celebrate the crossing - Sasha had a look and saw the price was 50 NOK/£5 a glass and decided against it, we didn't need it! The spoons though were a special engraved Hurtigruten souvenir which we got to keep. We relaxed around the boat for most of the day, as the boat was not stopping as often and a few of those stops were not for terribly long. We had lunch as the boat tried, and failed twice I believe to dock at Sandnessjoen before finally managing to do so - but it put the boat behind schedule for arrival at Bronnoysund. We'd decided to get off at Bronnoysund for a look around as it was about the only practical opportunity to do so - behind time, there would only be an hour there but that was enough to wander along the main street towards a church, where some of the snow had melted, formed large grey puddles and then re-frozen again. The wind was viciously cold, but the town was rather pretty looking - though rather hard to capture the prettyness on camera somehow. Same with taking photos of the ship with the mountain backdrop which looked spectacular to the eye, but failed to come out on camera properly. What was noticeable by now was the lessening amount of snow around - we were seeing proper grass for the first time since probably the beginning of our trip. Back on board, we took a look at the menu for the restaurant and then the menu in the cafe before we scored the comfy seats up the front of the Observation lounge again and watched our ship make its way south as the light began to fade. The food from the cafe didn't look half bad and they had a reindeer steak dish on offer for a reasonable price considering - so we figured we'd go there for dinner when the time came. There was an announcement at one stage that the Expedition Team would be doing a presentation in the bar, but no other details other than when it would begin and it didn't pique our interest so we stayed put. After a while as it was getting darker, the lights suddenly went on in the Observation lounge - they had never been on at any stage during our trip, at night it had always been in darkness! a voice came over the speakers saying that if we hadn't got a glass of Champagne, there were still some left. Intrigued, I went to find out what was the story having agreed with Sasha that if we had to pay for it, we wouldn't bother. Out in the corridor behind the observation lounge there was a table lined with glasses all full of champagne, and you were allowed to help yourself for free - so I grabbed two glasses and took them back in the lounge. A little while later, the Excursions Director, the Expedition Team and the Captain and Main Officers all filed into the Observation lounge and were presented to the assembled crowd - they were having the main cruise Farewell Dinner and celebrations this night as although the cruise officially ended in Bergen, a lot of people were leaving the ship at Trondheim the next day. So the presentation was a video or slideshow recapping the entire expedition voyage from Bergen to Kirkenes and return, and the Champagne was to mark the end of the cruise. Once all the official speeches were over, the crew did a lap of the Observation lounge and left and we finished our glasses. I wondered if there were any left, so Sasha went out and found there were still some on the table - so we sneakily helped ourselves to a 2nd round! We also took the opportunity of having the lights on in the lounge to pose with a fake ship's wheel. For dinner, we went to the cafe to get dinner only to find that the "Day's Specials" were no longer available - it seems that after 6pm, when the restaurant opens the other meals that don't appear on the menu are no longer available. However there was still some food which appealed - I had what was essentially an open steak sandwich but the steak was Reindeer, while Sasha had Sausages with mash and peas - but the Sausages were Chicken, Lamb and Reindeer. To wash it down with we got some of the local soft drink varieties - Sasha got a Schweppes Bitter Lemon, while I got a drink called "Frukt Sjimpanse" which translates to Fruit Chimpanzee, basically a soft drink with a mix of fruit flavours and while slightly bubblegum potent it was not bad actually. The cafe surrounds were comfortable - the style of decor was perhaps a bit dated, but that did not mean that it was in any way untidy or worn-looking, and in fact it looked rather clean and not altogether old. This contrasted a bit with the knowledge that come March, Nordkapp comes out of service for an entire interior decor refit getting a new "Arctic Interior" that a number of ships are getting. In Hurtigruten's own words, they are getting rid of the 90's style cruise ship decor - sure, it probably is 90's style but its very well kept and in actual fact its quite comfy and warm feeling. By comparison, while the "Arctic Interior" will bring new and improved features it looks ultra-modern and also a tad "cold" and unwelcoming to my eyes. Sasha had grown rather fond of the comfy chairs up in the front of the Observation lounge, and we wondered how easily it might be to get our hands on one of those (they weren't being re-used) but it likely was just too hard!. In our cabin, we packed most of our things away in our bags to make things that much easier in the morning - having been in one place for 3 nights, more stuff had come out of our bags than at any other stage during the trip and so it took some time to pile it all back in! While packing, I remarked about how worn the material between the pockets in by rucksack were getting and that it might only survive a few more trips. Some of the holes were quite useful, but the bag's frayed condition internally was getting noticeably worse - all the zips were still fine with only slight signs of stitching. The sky outside was raining, cloudy and we were getting further south - the Aurora was expected to be kp2 at best that night, which meant it would be not possible for us to see. There would be no more chances for us to see the Aurora this trip, and with that knowledge we went to sleep for the night. Day 9 - The Long Hop HomeBy the time we woke up at 6.30am, Nordkapp was already docked in Trondheim. This was the time it was meant to arrive there, but it must have got there slightly quicker overnight. Although when booking we'd initially had the impression we had to get off the ship when it docked at 6.30, we'd found out when we checked in that we had to be out of our cabins by 8am but we could stay on board until the ship departed at 10.00am. We needed to be at Trondheim Airport about 10am, and we'd done our homework and knew we had to catch a train at 9.10am to be there for that time. So we showered, and then headed to breakfast just as the restaurant was supposed to open at 7am only to find signs that people must have been eating there for a while. Perhaps because there were shore excursions in Trondheim leaving early, those people were able to go to breakfast earlier? not that it mattered to us, and we had our typical breakfast - cooked food, then a round of fruits and/or cereal with a health shot, and then the sandwich assembly round before we went back to our cabin, packed the last of our things. Just as we were about to put on all our bags and leave the ship, Sasha noticed a problem - my black bag, the 2nd biggest of our bags had one strap that was almost detached at the bottom part of the strap. There was no way it was going to take any weight nor any way of fixing it up. New plan, Sasha would take the big purple backpack, I would take the bags that Sasha usually carried (including the broken black bag) and we would each have a smaller item each as well. The ship was offering a bus transfer from the wharf to the railway station for a fee but we knew the station was only a 10min walk from the wharf at most and the price for the transfer seemed steep. Carrying the black bag was possible by its top handle, but awkward and between that and Sasha carrying a lot of weight in the purple backpack, it took us about twice as long to reach the station as we had anticipated. Having reach the station, we could sit down and take the bags off our backs - but gone had been any thoughts we might get to walk around Trondheim for a bit nor go see the Trondheim Cathedral. We did take turns however having a quick wander around the station area with our respective cameras getting photos of the early morning city scene as the sun came up and shone brilliantly (and for me there might have been one or two trains photographed too). Trondheim is a bit more inland, and because of that it was colder than the coast had been the day before - and still had lots of snow. At the appointed time, we headed to Platform 1 which just happened to be the platform right behind our seats so we didn't have to lug the bags far (and in the process of accidentally putting the broken strap on my back, the strap tore completely at the bottom end) and we hopped on the short but smart railcar. The sun streamed in the windows as we skirted the waterline of small bays, and we stopped at a number of the local stations in either Trondheim's suburbs or then the little towns along the way. The station before the airport particularly took our attention - it was called Hell. No joke, that's its name and the name of the little town there. Many years ago when at school I remember being told an anecdote about how Hell was in Norway, and in the winter it froze over (referencing the Eagle's album). Well unwittingly, we'd found that very Hell, and although not fully frozen over it was still pretty frozen looking! One building a bit further down the platform had a sign that said "Hell, God's Mission". I suppose I could make all kinds of quips how we've been to Hell but didn't stay for long, or that we passed through Hell on the way to the Airport or a million other jokes! the airport was next; we tried checking in for our flight at the self check-in, but couldn't get it to read our passports so we did so at the counter. We were flying SAS, on the cheapest set of flights we could get for that day back to London which although not cheap by Europe standards, were less than half of the next available flight cost when we'd gone to book. They weren't a direct flight, they weren't even booked direct with SAS, but through a 3rd party booking provider I'd used before with no issues - and they also included a checked bag each at no extra cost so we checked the purple backpack and my broken rucksack. Sasha commented the weight of the purple backpack was the heaviest it had ever been in her travels so far! We were checked through right the way to London, and we wouldn't have to worry about our bags until we got to Heathrow at the end. Once through security, we wandered around the fairly well appointed airport terminal before sitting down for a while, and then eventually boarded our first plane. Our flights were somewhat unusual, in that we were catching two different planes, but technically 3 flights. According to our booking, our first flight was from Trondheim to Stavanger down near the bottom coast of Norway - but in the process of seeing if we could book the flights cheaper direct with SAS (answer was a resounding no, by the way) I'd discovered that the plane would stop roughly halfway through at Bergen before carrying on. This particular plane was a Boeing 737, but one of the 600-models which are pretty much the shortest variant of this type of airliner and as a consequence, it didn't hold that many people. We took our seats, the plane filled up to perhaps 2/3-3/4 full and we left the airbridge, taxied along the side of the runway and then instead of turning onto the runway when we neared the end of it, we turned in the opposite direction and parked up near some trucks by some sheds. These trucks had almost crane cabins at the end of a raised arm and a kind of hose at the end as well - we were going to be de-iced before takeoff. Not the first time I've experienced that (only once before in Christchurch as it began to heavily snow, taking off into what seemed like a blizzard) and not that it looked like we had any ice but better safe than sorry! Once done, we then taxied along the side of the runway in the opposite direction, past the terminal and to the other end of the runway before taking off. Once in the air, we got a good view of the snow-covered terrain and the airport below us, and then we flew into and above cloud. We were served tea or coffee, and before long we were descending into Bergen which was covered in low cloud and didn't look like it was having much of a good day there. We taxied to the terminal, connected to the airbridge, the door was opened and those passengers getting off at Bergen got up and left - those of us going to Stavanger stayed on board. Once the others had all left, new passengers came on board, took up all the remaining seats just as an icy rain squall fell outside. We could see little icy flecks of hail on the wings and sure enough, because of that squall we had to be checked for de-icing again before we were cleared for take-off. Sasha and I had remarked how short the previous leg had been, and we had a few guesstimates as to how long we thought it was. To me, it felt slightly longer than your typical Wellington to Christchurch flight as we had not been rushed into finishing our tea/coffee's and I knew the time in the air for those flights is usually about 35 minutes. So as we approached the runway, I decided to time this next leg as surely it would be even shorter - I started the timer on my phone as we began our run down the runway, and it ended after we came to a stop at the end of Stavanger's runway and we turned off for the terminals. Total flight time of that leg - 22 minutes and 20 seconds! Most probably, the shortest flight time either of us had ever experienced to date. Stavanger was a bigger airport than Trondheim, but not hugely so and it was somewhere where we had a tad under 4 hours before our final flight to London took off. Not an ideal amount of transit time stuck in an airport, but better than anything else we'd seen and also quite a decent margin for error had the weather been horrendous - it was winter, after all!. One thing we'd noticed on our descent into Stavanger was how the ground was now green, no sign of any snow - the landscape had looked pretty in a rugged kind of way but rather spectacular in the sunlight. Our time in Stavanger was spent wandering around the terminal building, visiting the duty free so Sasha could obtain sweet treats for colleagues back in London, watching planes come and go and for a couple of minutes I took photos of a KLM rear-engines Fokker 70 plane (not very common) only to spot a distinctive type of Russian cargo jet come into view behind it! We also ate addictive Non-Stops (M&M/Smartie like candy covered chocolates), had a plate of fries and a drink each (Sasha a glass of Champagne, but a Lager (the only local beer they had on tap) before we boarded our flight (a 737, but a much larger -700 model this time) back to London Heathrow. The flight was quite uneventful - only things I can remember of note were we were in seats 4A and 4B, the very first seats of the standard class section and I wondered if because we were the first people checked in for the flight (all the way back in Trondheim) that we got the first allocated seats on the plane, and they fill it up from the front to the back. Traversing Heathrow was a bit of a pain - it always tends to be, long lines for many border control gates, less people in "Other Passports" than "UK/EU Passports" but the UK/EU lines always move faster and there was all manner of officious looking people dressed in different attire each acting like they were more superior than the others. People in red blazers, people in purple blazers, people in white shirts and black jerseys, people in black shirts with blue and white striped epaulets - all telling people what to do and where to go and often contradicting themselves. Heathrow,never seems easy - but Sasha, meanwhile with her awesome Registered Traveller card managed to breeze through the e-gates and had to wait on the other side for me, retrieving our checked bags in that time too. After that, it was simply a matter of catching the Piccadilly Line tube and heading to our respective homes at the end of just over a week's long of travels - a rather quiet end to what was in reflection a rather exciting and enjoyable trip! Summing UpWhile incorporating many different things, the whole underlying reason for going on this trip was to see the Northern Lights. In this, we were successful - and not only did we see them, but we saw them dance spectacularly at the Aurora Lake. Not only that, but it also happened to be on our first night in the proper "aurora zone" - meaning we could relax for the rest of the trip, and not fret as every day went past that the chances were getting less and that we might not get to see them at all. I don't know that I've ever been in constant snow for just over a week, but now I can say I have and I was particularly taken with how caked in snow a lot of the places we saw (in particular Northern Sweden). Trudging through snow that you sink into up to your knees at least is a new novelty I experienced! Luckily I had the gear to be warm enough in the cold temperatures - a mix of ensuring I had some of my warm pieces of clothing from NZ, and acquiring new items (particularly helped by the fact that lots of sporting stores were clearing out their ski gear at heavily discounted prices). We covered quite a large area of territory when all is said and done over those 9 days - almost the entire length of Mid-to-Northern Sweden, and Northern-to-Mid Norway. While we transited through Bergen and Stavanger, they don't count as places visited according to the rules. Because its always good to get perspective, here's one of those maps! Friday 12th, London to Stockholm (not shown); Saturday 13th, Stockholm (not shown) Sunday 14th, Overnight train north out of Stockholm (Purple); Monday 15th, Overnight train to Bodo, train to Kiruna and visit to Aurora Lake (Blue); Tuesday 16th, Kiruna (not shown) Wednesday 17th, Kiruna to Tromso by train and bus (Black); Thursday 18th, Tromso (not shown); Friday 19th, Tromso to Aurora spot in Norwegian sea aboard ferry (Orange); Saturday 20th, Aurora spot to south of Rorvik aboard ferry (Red); Sunday 21st, ferry to Trondheim, plane to Bergen and Stavanger (Purple), plane Stavanger to Longon (not shown). Virtually all of what I said I hoped to do at some stage in that first paragraph of this blog (taken from my previous Sweden blog post), we achieved - Sweden is a very pretty country and rather clean too, and that goes for Northern Sweden also and I was glad I could introduce Sasha to the country. Sweden had been a known quantity for me and I had high expectations for it (and I wasn't disappointed) but for a trip which seemed to be mostly focussed on Sweden during the planning stages (Stockholm, the train all the way north, Kiruna for the Northern Lights), Norway seemed a bit of an afterthought to me going into it. Norway was new territory for us both, but it was quite an eye opener. Travelling through spectacular snow-draped coastal landscapes from the comfort of the Cruise Ferry helped a lot - and those landscapes are quite something, I don't know why that's not more of a noted thing or a "must-do". It would be a completely different experience in the summertime - not only would the landscapes look very different with the lack of snow, but the far longer daylight hours would mean you see a lot more. Scandinavian countries are always reputed as being expensive - I noted in my last blog entry about Sweden that I didn't feel it was that much more expensive than London, and I found nothing this time which would change that feeling. Norway on the other hand, to me seems to earn its expensive reputation but we had a great time there nonetheless (and who knew that you'd find some of the best pizza in Norway?). Very few people I know have been to Norway, its almost always Bergen or Oslo, or if they have been to Northern Norway its probably Tromso. I know of no-one who has done the Hurtigruten Ferry, and us finding out about it was an accident in the course of scoping the trip but became a main feature of the holiday - and was well worth it, its a great way to see Northern Norway. Hurtigruten have a wide array of ships - ours held about 450 but they have ones that fit over 1000, and even one of their vintage 1960's-built ferries still in service giving people different style of trips along the coast. We just took the ferry that was sailing on the dates that suited us, and on the whole I think the Nordkapp was the perfect ferry for our trip. Some things worked out better than we'd planned or hoped - getting that awesome Northern Lights tour at the last minute in Kiruna and then getting to see one hell of a light show in the sky, or being able to fluke that earlier Narvik to Tromso bus. Not everything worked out good though - it turns out our photos from the Aurora aren't quite what we'd hoped. For me, it turns out at some point on the provided Canon camera I knocked the manual focus and put the image out of focus slightly - so my photos go from weaker, but razor-sharp Aurora photos to bright and vivid, but slightly blurry Aurora photos. I did have two camera's, so the sharpest photos I have of the bright Aurora are those taken on my Nikon - but they aren't as sharp as the Canon, as I elected to use my 18-250mm superzoom lens rather than my 35mm prime lens in order to get closer, zoomed in shots of the Aurora as a contrast to the Canon. I also have to say for a camera that is getting a bit older now and that I thought was going to struggle in the cold due to past experiences, my trusty Nikon D5000 performed without a problem even when it was starting to have ice forming on it! For Sasha however, hers is worse - the SD card she was using (and I gave her) is corrupted. I spent the first couple of days after we returned trying to retrieve the images, but was only able to get the ones up to the point where the 10 second 10-shot photos begin and the rest are not able to be retrieved by any process that I threw at the card. That means all the better photos of the two of us under the Aurora and the ones playing around with torches, plus the better crop of Sasha's Aurora photos are lost - but as a consolation we do have a photo each of us standing under the Aurora individually and one passable one of the two of us together. That SD card won't be used again as I am not risking losing any more photos - the loss of a few photos last time I was in Sweden on another SD card was an indication I failed to heed until that card died in Sarajevo, almost with (but luckily not) disastrous effect. The photos we have are better than nothing - and at least we have photos of the Aurora at all, because it could well have been we ended up with none because we never got to see it! I have one or two other observations to note. The first is how all the places we stayed at in Sweden had the water pipes in the bathroom on the outside of the walls, rather than behind them - you could see them, they were very carefully and tastefully displayed but there they were. This is true of the other place I stayed at during my previous Stockholm visit but I thought that had been a quirk of the old cruise ship - it would seem not. The merits of having water pipes where you can see them, and where you can easily fix a leak before it destroys parts of the wall seem rather strong although it must make the bathroom a nightmare to keep clean. Also, none of their showers have separate shower floor areas - its just the same floor as the bathroom floor, no well or sloped area either and you end up getting the entire bathroom floor wet. Which is a pain! The second observation is how we got through the entire two countries, with no real language barrier problems at all. I don't think we encountered a single person from Sweden or Norway who couldn't speak some English, even in the smaller towns and I do feel bad sometimes how we just bowl into places expecting the locals to speak English when the native tongue is something else. Problem is, we keep getting away with it - English is a very pervasive language it would seem. I liked Stockholm the last time I went, and I liked it this time and was quite pleased with seeing it in the contrast of seasons - it is still one of my favourite cities. Sweden in general I quite like too, and was rather taken with Kiruna - its not the prettiest of places, but it sure has a really nice character to it and although a lot of people rave about Tromso in Norway, I'd still place Kiruna ahead of Tromso on any list. Having done virtually everything I had hoped I might get to do in Stockholm and Sweden in general, as much as I like the place as far as I am concerned the place has been "done" and I am not likely to have a strong excuse to go back to either Stockholm, Kiruna or Sweden itself during my time over in this part of the world. Never say never though - for all I know it might make sense to visit Sweden on the way to somewhere else on a future trip. Norway on the other hand, I feel like is still unfinished business - I have seen a lot of the top, but I would still very much like to go to Bergen and Oslo and do that "Norway in a Nutshell" trip between the two cities. Having seen Norway winter, I think seeing it in warmer seasons would be an idea for next time for the contrast - just like I did for Sweden. Another thing about Norway, which is probably less likely is Svalbard - that Island way up the top which would have been covered in cloud the whole time during this trip, is a place where you can go see Polar Bears fairly easily in the wild. I'd like to see Polar Bears in the wild before they go extinct, and going there seems like the best bet. Uncle Wayne is looking at going there in April, so perhaps he will be able to offer pointers and advice! There is of course so much to do, and so little time - what is still realistic to achieve and what isn't? Despite having thought about it and wanting to, would I have done anything similar to this trip if it hadn't been for Sasha expressing her desire to see the Northern Lights and helping spur the whole trip into action? I don't actually know, but I do know without Sasha this particular form of trip would not have been possible - that's one great thing about having a travel companion who has similar tastes and travel style of your own, there's little need to compromise on anything because you both like and want to do the same things (as well as Sasha being excellent company in general!).
So, Northern Lights - tick. Sweden, tick and Upper Norway, tick. Where to next, I wonder? |
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A Kiwi out travelling in the UK and surrounding countries Archives
August 2019
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