We have been moving quickly to put together a plan for this cruise. The trip is not that far out in the future, especially considering the limited availability of tours in these smaller Norwegian cruise ports.
We initially worked on making independent reservations for some Northern Lights Tours in the two main ports in northern Norway we will visit, Tromso and Alta. Tromso was first on our list, and we were able to find several nighttime tours that had both availability and were highly recommended with good review scores on Viatour. Viatour is part of the Trip Advisor company, and we used them to make our reservation for an independent tour on our recent trip to China. I did not even look to see if we could make any reservations directly with the tour companies we selected, partly because Viatour had offered some discounts if I submitted email addresses for other people I knew. I used Stephanie’s email and she received a 15% discount code which I then used to make the first reservation.
It was a little tricky, at first the code did not work, I actually had to use a different web browser to make the reservation under my Viatour login, damn those “cookies”, somehow it knew who I was and the discount would not work in the initial browser, Microsoft Edge, so I switched to Google Chrome, and was able to receive the discount. It was fairly substantial in total dollars, we were proceeding with reservations for us plus Suzie and Michael, so with four persons, it added up.
We were focusing on selecting companies that used smaller vans for these tours versus large groups on a big bus. The smaller groups should be able to be more flexible and one would assume the smaller vehicles can go in areas that buses could not, mainly based on overall road conditions. The only drawback is that the larger buses might have bathroom facilities on them, and the smaller vehicles will not. These tours are at night, and out in the wilderness, so bathrooms may be an issue since the tours may be up to six hours long. We will just have to do a little research to figure it out, especially since these tours provide heavy-duty one-piece winter jumpsuits for the guests to wear to keep warm.
We picked a tour called Northern Lights Hunt With The Green Adventures and made a reservation for four, and with our 15% discount, it was about $198.00 per person, much less than any of the similar Viking Excursions that were already sold out. This tour had a review score of 4.8 with over 500 reviews, and the reviews were very positive. I read many of them just to get a sense of what people liked or disliked before we made the reservation. It is a maximum group size of 15.
It was also nice that with these Viatour reservations, we did not have to make any payment until about two days before the tour starts in late January, we only had to submit a credit card that will automatically be charged within 48 hours prior to the tour start time. These reservations are fully cancellable up until that time.
In addition to the Northern Lights tour, Stephanie and I discussed the possibility of reserving a glass igloo cabin in Finland before the cruise. We had seen some online information about one particular company several years ago, and since that time, it had been something Stephanie wanted to do, but it was a cold weather trip and pretty expensive. Now that we were already going for the Northern Lights anyway, it sort of made sense to look into renting an igloo before this trip started in Bergen. We had the flexibility of making flight reservations to anywhere, so we could just as easily pick Helsinki, Finland instead of Bergen, Norway for our initial flight destination.
I looked at Booking.com and found the same glass igloo rentals that we had seen a few years ago, and they had availability for the dates we were looking at prior to the cruise. However, our hopes quickly diminished once we started reading some of the posted reviews. It was apparent that the original company who had started these rentals several years ago was no longer involved, or so it seemed. It was difficult to know for sure, but many reviews commented that there were no people from Finland on the staff now. Also, there were many reviews about the lack of cleanliness of the units, and that the restaurants were just not good, but very expensive. There were also many complaints about getting to the property from the airport, there were shuttle companies that had exorbitant prices for the shuttle rides, pricing was listed as being around $200 each way, and people thought that they were being taken advantage of. The overall review score was around 7.2 on Booking.com, which is low, and certainly not worth it when the prices are so high.
In the end, we decided that we would look at some other properties that offered the same type of accommodations. These glass igloos are sort of a fad in Finland, and they are expensive, so there was no point going somewhere that was not being reviewed favorably. I liken these glass igloos to overwater bungalows in tropical places. They are beautiful, but boy are they expensive.
We did some additional research and found a couple of other properties near the city of Rovaniemi, Finland. This city is about 120 miles south of the other igloo property, but a little easier to get to, there is an airport in Rovaniemi which is served by regular Finnair flights.
The first property we found was both an ice hotel and had glass igloos, but we were not able to get a reservation for the dates we wanted. We had determined that we would skip staying in Bergen, Norway before the cruise, and just make our travel plans to arrive there the day we could board the ship, which is January 22, 2025. So, we needed accommodations with a check-out date of January 22. This particular property only had an igloo for rent from January 19 through January 21, and that did not fit our plan.
We found an alternate property nearby that had one unit left, a King Igloo, which was larger than we needed, but it was the only one available for the dates we required, so we made a reservation there. The property is called The Apukka We chose the fully refundable option, which was more costly, but we still had several details to work on in our travel plans
We looked into different flight options and alternate ways to get to Rovaniemi. We found we could fly there directly, routing through Amsterdam. We also looked into flying into Helsinki and then taking a night train from there to Rovaniemi.
We found that the price to fly directly there was about the same as the price to fly to Helsinki and then take the night train from there. The only difference was the date we needed to leave home, for the direct flight, we could leave on Saturday, but for the flight to Helsinki, plus the night train from there to Rovaniemi, we needed to leave on Friday, we had to account for the extra night on the train.
We have not taken a night train in many years but had really enjoyed that previous experience when we took one from Venice to Vienna, so we made the decision to add that to our Itinerary for this trip. That locked down our departure date as January 17, so now we could look at flights. Our plan is to stay for three nights in London after the cruise ends, so we will plan on returning home on February 6 from London.
Everything was coming together. We went ahead and purchased our night train tickets, selecting the upper car berths that also include a shower and toilet in the cabin versus down the hallway. It was a little more expensive, but now we could relax and shower in our train car after our long flights to get to Helsinki. We will have to wait a bit in the Helsinki train station because our train does not depart until 7:25 PM. Our planned flights to Helsinki arrive at around 1:10 PM but we still need to go through immigration, collect our luggage and then take a short 25-minute train trip from the Helsinki Airport to the Helsinki Central Train Station to catch the night train. The only other flight arrival time was 5:30 PM, and that would cut it close to making the night train at 7:25 PM, and just add stress to the long flights if there were a delay.
We opted to pay a little extra for the night train tickets so that they were 100% refundable prior to departure. It just takes stress away if there are flight delays and we need to change the train time to the later one, even if we can’t get a sleeper berth, at least we will get to Rovaniemi.
Our next item to get done was to pick out an excursion for our cruise top in Alta, Norway on January 26, which is a Sunday. That is our arrival day, and we spend the night there in port, the same as our time in Tromso. I had briefly looked at Alta Tours on Viatour, and it was not encouraging. There were not many to choose from, and many were already booked, probably by Viking. It must be a much smaller town than Tromso because there were not many tour companies there, even when I looked at different dates when the Viking ship was not there. I just wanted to see if the short supply was due to the Viking reservations or not, not. There are just not many tours there at all that I could find, either on Vaitour or other online searches.
In the end, we decided on one of two available night tours. One was a 4-wheeler ATV tour and the other was a snowmobile tour. Both are about the same duration and cost. We elected to reserve the snowmobile tour, Stephanie has never ridden on one. Both tours were for dual riders, so we would both be on the same vehicle in either case. We did not reserve anything for Suzie and Michael, just ourselves. I did not want to make too many reservations since we had not gotten any input from them on these Alta tours.
While I was doing research on the Alta tours, I did see one other detailed online review of two of the Tromso Northern Lights Tours, and neither company in the review was the one we had chosen. One of the tours was even more highly rated than the one we had selected, and it had about three times as many reviews. Somehow, I had not seen it listed on our first search for tours. The detailed review was very favorable, so we went ahead and made another reservation with that company. I was able to get the same 15% discount, but it took a little effort. I did make the reservation for four people again.
I sent all of this information on the reservations as well as the detailed review to Suzie and Michael and asked for their input on the two Tromso tour companies. I did not hear back from them on either company, so I was not willing to add them to the reservation in Alta for the snowmobiles, I do not want to have to make a lot of changes if they do not want to go. We will just forward the tour information to them and they can book it themselves if they want to join us.
The last item we looked into was getting from Rovaniemi, Finland to Bergen, Norway on January 22 to board the Viking Cruise Ship. We already knew there were quite a few flights into the Rovaniemi airport, so we assumed it was the same for flights out, and it was. There are several flights daily from Rovaniemi to Helsinki. There is just one flight from Helsinki to Bergen, and it arrives in Bergen at 5:30 PM. All of these are flights on Finnair.
Initially, I thought there was only one departure from Rovaniemi to Helsinki, and it was only a 45-minute layover before the lone flight to Bergen, and that seemed risky. I looked on Google Flights and saw that there were indeed several departures from Rovaniemi and we just needed to select one of the four different ones based on how much layover we wanted to have.
One-way flights are about $180.00 per person to Bergen, and we will need to make those reservations soon, the plane from Helsinki to Bergen is not that large, so we don’t want to delay that too much longer.
We still have a few things to work on, airfare purchase will be next.
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