Norway - Tromso - Arriving

June 2006

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I have always wanted to see the "Midnight Sun" so, as my birthday is the day after the Northern Hemisphere's Summer Solstice and this was a big birthday (joining Club Four-OH!) we decided this was a good year to go.

We chose Tromso in Norway as it is inside the Arctic Circle and has the added beauty of the Norwegian Fjords. Tromso is Norway's northernmost city, 300km north of the Arctic Circle, and is known as the "Gateway to the Arctic". To get there from London takes some time as we flew first to Oslo and then, after a couple hours wait, flew on to Tromso. About half a day's travel but, given that no matter what time of the day or night you arrive it is still light, it does not really matter. We got to our hotel after 7 PM that night and, after checking in, went for a walk around the "bustling metropolis" of Tromso which can be covered in a fairly short time and found the only open shop was the Spar supermarket. It was amazing how similar Tromso is to some of the towns in Alaska but then we read that it is on the same Latitude (nearly 70 degrees north) as Alaska so not really so amazing. We went out for supper at around 10:30 PM and, sitting at a window table, it looked more like we should be eating lunch! We were back at our hotel (less than 100 metres away) before midnight. Our hotel had a bar with an outside viewing platform and, just before midnight, the sun came out from behind the clouds. It was easy to see that day's new arrivals, we were all on the platform Ooh'ing and Aah'ing and taking lots of photos. We were actually very fortunate as, being so far north means constantly changing weather and no guarantee of blue skies at any time of the year. The temperature range while we were there was between 8 and 14 degrees Celsius in the middle of summer!!!