We had been so tired last night after our tour of “Chasing the Northern Lights”, so of course, we slept in. Well, that was at least until the cruise director made her daily 8:15 AM announcement about today’s activities onboard the ship. It is not directly announced in the cabin, but it is pretty loud in the hallway outside.
We had our curtain pulled with the room darkening shade, not for light, it is dark here until 10:00 AM, but for warmth. The sliding glass door frame for access to the balcony is made of heavy-duty aluminum, and it really transmits the cold to the inside, so the curtain helps to block the cold from that door. It also blocked out some of the lights on the pier.
I had set an alarm for 9:00 AM this morning so we could get up in time to get breakfast before the buffet closed at 10:00 AM. The announcements were at 8:15 AM, so now I was up. I did try to rest a bit more because we had been out so late last night, and I still felt tired.
The alarm went off and I got up and got dressed. I let Stephanie sleep in and was planning to bring her back some fruit and yogurt for breakfast like I did yesterday, only now I know which fruits to get.
I went to breakfast and had scrambled eggs, sausage, and some pastries, one of which was a pretty good mini apple strudel. It was over by the rolls and croissants, not by the other sweets in the dessert area. I also used one of the automated coffee machines to make a Cafe Americano instead of using the coffee in the insulated coffee carafes on the table. It seemed to be a better coffee, but I will need to do a taste test to see for sure,
I ate and while I was finishing, the supervisor for the buffet on this side came by to let us know it was closing, which I thought strange, it was only 9:30 AM, and it was supposed to close at 10:00 AM. I guessed the other side will remain open for the duration of breakfast. I was done anyway, but needed to get Stephanie’s fruit. I was able to find a bowl today, and made the bowl with the proper fruit, not that I had been instructed from yesterday’s failure or anything. I also go another Cafe Americano in a to-go cup, then put everything on a plate, covered it with a napkin, and headed to the room.
We have an included tour today called a Walking Tour of Tromso, and it is at 11:30 AM. I let Stephanie sleep a bit more before waking her to see if she was still wanting to go on the tour because of her cold.
She was feeling well enough to go on the tour, so now we needed to start getting ready. It is a walking tour of the older area of the city center of Tromso, and we needed to meet at the bus at 11:25 AM. I looked at our tickets, and the group number did not match up to the meeting time. The tickets I had were for the original schedule in Tromso, which was about two days different. Our time was listed on the Viking app for 11:30 AM, so I called Guest Services to make sure with the confusion of seeing the two times. It is even hard to figure it out from the Viking Daily, it only lists by group numbers not times.
I called and was told I needed new tickets since there had been a change in days for being in Tromso. I certainly had no idea we were supposed to bring the old tickets by Guest Services for new ones, but that was what I was instructed to do. Now I had to go down to Guest Services and get the new tickets printed. I took the old tickets for the next port since they also needed to be changed and updated.
I headed down to Deck 1 and had to wait for one person in line ahead of me. I explained everything to the rep. He was immediately able to print the two sets of revised tickets, and I was on the way back to the room. I wanted to take a shower before the tour, we had still not showered since yesterday morning, so I quickly showered and we began the process of getting dressed. Stephanie had eaten her fruit and yogurt while I was at Guest Services.
It just takes a while to get on all of the cold-weather clothes. We were not sure about the weather, but we knew it was right near freezing right now, and since this was an outside walking tour, we bundled up, knowing we could remove items if necessary.
At about 11:15 AM, we left the cabin and headed down to Deck 1 to get off of the ship for the tour. There was a steep set of stairs coming from the disembarkation exit down to the pier and we had to walk out to an area for cruise excursions. There was already a bus there and a guide with our group number on it, so we boarded the bus. I had not heard the lady guide at the bus offered to give us spikes that were strapped to your regular shoes with rubber strapping to help with the ice when walking. I saw some people getting them on the bus from the guide and I did not know what was happening, but Stephane told me the lady had offered them to us when we boarded, I just missed that entire conversation.
The bus was not full at all, in the end, I believe our guide said there were twenty of us. We had thought Michael and Suzie were going to try and squeeze into our group, they originally had a later tour when it would be dark. However, they did not show up.
We took the bus into the old town area, and that was much closer to the dock that is located downtown. There was a ship parked there that we knew was arriving today, it was the Balmoral, a Fred Olsen ship. The downtown pier would have meant we did not have to use a shuttle into town and would have allowed us much more flexibility, but with our change in schedule, that was obviously not an option.
Our guide was nice, she was originally from Canada but had come to Tromso many years ago for a short visit and ended up staying. She had obviously been here for many years, and could now speak fluent Norwegian.
We all headed from the bus stop to the waterfront harbor. It is interesting that Tromso typically never has the harbor completely freeze over in the wintertime, which is one of the reasons it was so popular when it was founded many years ago. It is close to the Gulf Stream, as is much of the Norwegian coast, and that means that the harbor and surrounding waters are not frozen or full of ice even though we are above the Arctic Circle. On our trip to Antarctica, we never went as far south as the Antarctic Circle, but there were icebergs everywhere, that is how much the warm Gulf Stream affects the waters of Norway to keep them from freezing.
Another interesting thing was an explanation about the slip-on ice spikes for your shoes. She gave a long story about adjusting to that, mostly a mental thing, at first, she thought they were unnecessary, but soon learned everyone used them and they were essential to being safe walking around. With the warmer weather, they frequently get some rain in the winter and it causes major icing problems and it is not safe to walk around without the slip-on spikes.
We walked around the town, seeing the museum for Roald Amundsen, the first person to visit both the North and South Poles. He was Norwegian, but not from this area, but Tromso was the originating city for many North Pole expeditions.
We saw several other sights including the smallest bar and some shopping streets that were in a pedestrian-only area that was being improved, just not this time of year, projects must just stop in the wintertime. There was even a Catholic Cathedral, home of the Bishop for this area. It had started to snow a little while the tour was going on, and now it was really starting to snow hard.
We decided we wanted to visit the Catholic Church, and our guide had said earlier that if at any time we wanted to go off on our own, we just needed to let her know, so Stephanie told her we were leaving the group. Several people had done it earlier, so we were not the first.
We had wanted to stay in town longer anyway and then just take the shuttle bus back to the ship, so there was no point going all the way back to the shuttle stop, the originating point for our tour in town, and then walking back to this shopping area. The tour was almost over anyway.
We visited the Catholic Church, it was quite small to be a Cathedral, but it was nice inside. Afterward, we headed back outside and it was snowing even harder now, it was in huge snowflakes.
We visited a couple of shops and the only issue was that it was just too hot inside a shop with all of the gear we were wearing to be outside. All of the shop workers were in short sleeves inside the stores because it was so warm.
It was also starting to get dark, sunset was at about 2:00 PM today, so with the snow and the early sunsets, it was getting dark fast.
We walked down one street toward the waterfront, and it just happened to be the street down to the bus stop. On the way, we saw Michael and Suzie, they had just gotten off the shuttle bus to walk around a bit, but only for 30 minutes until the next shuttle departed back to the ship.
We got on the shuttle bus and it departed a few minutes later. We wanted to get back to the ship so we could get some lunch, but we were not sure when the buffet closed, we thought it was after 2:00 PM. The shuttle ride was about 10 minutes, and after we arrived, we only had a few minutes to walk to board the ship.
We dropped off all of our heavy clothing in the room and headed to Deck 7 to go to the buffet for lunch. It was still open and we enjoyed a nice lunch back in a far corner of the buffet, Stephanie was trying to isolate herself due to her cold.
After lunch, we headed back to the cabin, Stephane was ready for a nap, her cold and the cold medicines were making her sleepy, plus, we did not get a lot of sleep last night since our tour got back so late.
I worked on the blog and looked at some of the pictures we took last night of the Northern Lights. There were a few that came out really well and many without much color as we were waiting for the Aurora to get stronger.
Tonight is lobster night, and we will either go to the buffet, which we did not know served lobster, or to The Restaurant to eat it there. Michale and Suzie wanted to go to the buffet to avoid dressing up that much, but I don’t think it really matters. However, now we were planning to meet them in the Buffet at 7:00 PM.
I got ready early and headed up to the buffet to look at their lobster tails, which were described as “grilled”. The ones being served in The Restaurant were described as “poached”. The ones being served in the buffet were split in half and grilled, so I hoped they were not overcooked. At least I can have some sushi with them in case they are not that good. I was surprised that there were not many people in the buffet when I checked it out, but it was still a little early.
I headed to the Library Bar to get a glass of wine after the excursion to the buffet. Unfortunately, the doors are open on one side of Deck 1 for the gangway, and even though the open doors are on the opposite side from the Bar it was drafty and cold there. I sat and ordered a glass of wine, but it was too cold to sit there and enjoy it, so I headed back to the room with my wine to wait for Stephanie to get ready for dinner.
We headed to the buffet at about 6:50 PM, and when we arrived, I was shocked to see how packed with people it was now. There were hardly any tables available and we decided to wait for Michael and Suzie at the bar in the stern of the ship, but still in the buffet area. We ordered a glass of wine and sat at the bar waiting for them.
The guitar player they had there for entertainment was talking with a couple, and we thought he was starting his performance. There was a table right in front of where he played, and Michael and Suzie came from the other side of the buffet and saw it. We did not want to sit right in front of the musician while we ate. Michael waited at the table just in case we could not find another one, and Suzie went to see if she could find a better location. She did, and it was in a much less busy location, so we went there to sit for dinner.
The ship was scheduled to depart Tromso tonight at 7:00 PM, so while we were eating, the ship started moving and we could see the ship pass under the bridge connecting the large island that Tromso is located on to the mainland.
Dinner was actually pretty good. The lobsters were going fast, so they did not sit long under the heat lamps getting dried out and overcooked. They were very difficult to get out of the half-shell, we all struggled with that task. I had wanted to get some split crab legs to go with my lobster, but the line for that station on the other side of the buffet was about 15 people deep, so I passed on those. I did enjoy some of the sushi.
We all had some type of dessert after dinner. We enjoyed the dinner and we sat at the table for a while and talked afterward, it was fun.
It was getting late and Stephanie was tired, still fighting whatever type of cold she has.
We headed back to the cabin to relax and get a good night’s sleep.
We had not been asleep long when our phone rang, it was the ship’s automated message that the Aurora had been spotted by the bridge watch. Since we had not gone outside last time it was spotted by the ship, I decided I would get dressed and go out to see how good the sighting was. Stephanie passed, she did not need to get out into the cold air with her cold.
I did not think I would see it just from our balcony because we were now heading south and we are on the side of the ship facing south. I quickly looked but I was correct, it was not visible.
We headed out the door and took the elevator up to Deck 8, which is the highest deck accessible by the elevators near our room. There were quite a few people out on the deck, but I found a spot near a column that was out of the wind and I could use the column to steady my cell phone. I had already decided in the room that I was not going to try and use the tripod and larger camera here, there was too much movement for the longer exposures.
I got a few photos and the Aurora did get a little brighter, but it was not moving or changing shape very much, it was just a band across the sky. It started to get dimmer so I did not stay much longer, plus, this area of the deck is for smokers, and there were a few there, and even though there was quite a bit of wind, it still smelled like smoke.
I decided to head to the other side of the ship to see if anything was there and it was. It was actually a little better here, there was more shape, but it was also windier on this side and difficult to hold the camera still, even using some of the wind barrier posts to steady it. Since it was now visible on the side where our balcony is I headed back to the room and took a few more photos from there before the Aurora started to go away.
It had lasted a good 45 minutes or more and was still not completely gone when I headed back inside, so it could have lasted longer. That is what takes patience, the Aurora is not a start and then stop thing, it may be visible, disappear and then reappear even brighter. Or, it may disappear and not come back, so one has to be willing to sit out and see what happens. It was late, cold and windy, so I was not willing to wait and see.
I headed back inside and called it a night.
Leave a Reply