And on to Norway!

I left Winston-Salem with mom at 1pm on June 9. Then, 5 flights, 1 missed connection, 1 semi-overnight hotel, 4 meals (including a breakfast of salsa and a meatball, which I “accidentally” napped through), a pack of No Jet Lag (Homeopathic? Yes. Works? Yes. Judging myself a little bit for my wholehearted faith in it? Absolutely.), and 39 hours later we arrived in Tromso, Norway: The Paris of the North. While that slogan is just a bit of an overstatement (I think “The Asheville of the North” is maybe a bit more accurate), it did not stop me from seriously considering buying a $32 T-shirt with the title.

Actually, back up… The flight to Tromso was one of the most beautiful trips I’ve ever taken. We flew in early in the morning, and for at least an hour before we got there, the entire view was nothing but snow covered mountains, separated by lakes, all covered by morning fog drifting in off the ocean. My face was literally pressed up against the window the entire time. It made missing our flight the night before 100% worth it to get to fly in in the morning. Actually, I’m writing this as we fly back south to Bergen and I think it’s going to take me the entire flight because I keep getting distracted every time I can see through the clouds. But back to Tromso…

Tromso is located in the arctic circle, and boasts a lot of “northernmosts in the world,” such as botantical garden, brewery, glassblowing factory, and Burger King. It is also the Land of the Midnight Sun, meaning that the sun never sets. Ever. At midnight the sun is well above the horizon and it looks like it is around 5pm. I get the general idea of how this is possible, but not nearly well enough to explain it here. If anybody finds a good explanation online, let me know. In the winter, the opposite happens and it is dark all the time, making Tromso one of the best places in the world to see the northern lights. Oh well, I guess this isn’t my last time here. Bummer;-)

The first thing we did after we left the hotel was go explore the small center of town, where they happened to be having a Thai festival. There was Thai food and actually a fair number of Thai people, though we never found an explanation for the festival in English. Pretty much every Norwegian can speak English, but there were very few signs around the town in English. What we gathered was that, while Tromso is pretty cool, most tourists really use it as a sort of base camp for full day long nature activities (sea kayaking, glacier hiking, etc), which, since we were only there for 48 hours, we did not have the time to do.

After getting our bearings, we decided to take a bus to the cable car—one of Tromso’s few tourist specific activities—to the top of a mountain overlooking the city and bay. The view really was breathtaking. Any way I can think of to describe it here would be super cheesy, so I will refer you to my facebook album… We spent a few hours up there just wandering around the mountain and trying to avoid falling through snow (mental note- sneakers are not acceptable footwear for hiking in the arctic) before going back to our hotel for a nap. Jetlag is NO FUN.

We really lucked out weather wise actually, which is especially good for mom and I, who have both been known to break out our heavy winter coats well freezing temperatures are in the remotely foreseeable future. So even though there was snow, we got away with light jackets. Of course, most of the people in Tromso were in shorts and tees, and we even saw people sunbathing next to patches of snow.
Yesterday, in the morning we went to the town’s few museums and learned about arctic environments. Then, in the afternoon we went to the botanical garden, which, as one would expect in the arctic, was not very extensive (though it was a beautiful garden). After wandering around for a while we found a place on the grass and spent the afternoon reading, with mountains rising around us in every direction. Not so adventurous, but a perfect afternoon.

Overall, the town was very quiet since we were there on Sunday and a holiday Monday. People here clearly like their vacation and pretty much all of the businesses were closed, including some of the restaurants. The restaurants we did end up in were always pretty empty. The last night we ended up in a restaurant and were literally the only people there. The waitress told us it was because everyone was at home grilling. The night before when we asked our waitress what the holiday was, she responded “I don’t know. Nobody knows. It’s a national hoooooliday.” We got most of information about the town from waitresses, actually…

Ok, this is getting long so I need to end. Speaking of food though, as anyone who has ever traveled with me knows, I consider no adventure complete without gaining extensive knowledge of local cuisine. Months ago I began declaring that I was going to to an eating tour of Norway. Food here is unbelievably expensive (a coke for $4 and not a single restaurant offering dinner for under $20) so I didn’t do a lot of snacking, but the food we ate was delicious. Lots of fish, which is not my favorite. True to my Jewish roots though, I’ve had about my whole years worth of lox already. A lot of restaurants serve whale (which I thought was illegal, but I guess is not here), elk, and reindeer. While I didn’t try any of these in the restaurants, I did buy a pack of reindeer jerky to bring back to the US and share with whoever is around when I open it (note: bribery will be received favorably).

That’s all for now. Sorry this was so ramble-y. Will try to do more frequent and concise posts from here on out. Hade!