Winter in Norway Part 3: Tromso (the Northern Lights)

When we were in Bergen talking about what we should do next,
I looked at Paul and said, “Look, I will probably never be this close to the
Northern Lights again in my life, we can’t leave without at least trying.  So, we started studying weather forecasts and
travel schedules (fun fact: you can’t see the Northern Lights just anywhere in
Norway, even though it seems pretty darn North already, you have to travel to
the tip top for a shot at the lights. 
And a shot really is all it is. 
There’s no guarantee the weather and the conditions will line up for you
in all the right ways.  But nevertheless,
we had to try. 

This time I will start with our low light:

Boat Excursion for the Northern Lights –

Do you remember in my previous posts about Norway I
mentioned that travel across the country isn’t all that easy??  Well, it’s true.  Once we decided that our best shot was to hit
Tromso, we realized the most convenient (and trust me, it wasn’t convenient at
all) way to get from Bergen to Tromso was to take a train from Bergen back
to Oslo and then to fly from Oslo to Tromso. 
Still, we were sure it would be worth it. 

We were also convinced that the best bet we had of seeing
the Northern Lights was to go out (extra fun fact, most of the time you can’t
just see them from the city of Tromso, you have to travel even further out,
away from the city lights, in hopes of catching them) on an expedition the
night we got in town.  Now, I’m sure most
parents, having just ready that we would be taking a morning train and then an
afternoon flight, are shaking their heads right now and swearing we are glutton
for punishment.  And, they aren’t
wrong.  We knew it would be a very long
and trying day but based on all of the weather forecasts, the day we landed
would be the only clear evening.  And you
have to have a clear sky to see the Northern Lights.  So, we booked a late night boat excursion out
of Tromso.  We headed out with very high
hopes. I’d read reviews from just the night before where people talked about
how amazing seeing the lights were from the boat.  Even are guides, who were cautioning us that
you never could be sure if you would see the lights and that it depends on a
load of factors coming together at once, seemed pretty optimistic. 

Unfortunately, we were all wrong.  Not even a hint of the Northern Lights that
night.  We stood outside on that darn
boat for hours hoping to see something, anything.  But, alas, we saw nothing.  In retrospect, I don’t think that boat tour
was the best bet on seeing the lights. 
We never really got away from the lights of the city.  Whatever the reason though, we were all
pretty bummed we didn’t see the Northern Lights when we had come so far and
really exhausted ourselves with our hopes really on that one evening.

Trying to make the most of our busted boat trip by hanging out in the deck sauna.

Acceptance.  No Northern Lights for us..

Now for some highlights:

Polaria –

And I wouldn’t be being honest with you if I told you this
makes my must-do list in Tromso.  The
aquarium is pretty small and didn’t hold our attention as well as many of the
others we’ve visited.  But, they did have
a seal show and Nora fell head over heals in love with the seals.  In fact, even now months later, she’ll
randomly start talking about Bella the seal!

Meet Bella.  Nora’s best friend in Norway.

Tromsobadet –

Unfortunately, no description I
put together here is going to do this indoor pool complex justice.  Because, I’m sure you all are like me and
when someone says indoor pool, all you can picture is athletes foot and the
overwhelming stench of chlorine.  And
trust me, this is what I expected when I read the recommendation for visiting the
Tromsobadet with kids.  So, I was very pleasantly surprised by the facility that we went back for a second visit!  The pool itself is more like a system of ten
different pools.  There’s a big wave pool
for kids with a whirl-y pool connected to it, there’s multiple hot tubs (the
size of swimming pools). There’s a sauna and even a quiet enclosed healing
pool.  There are two water slides
traversing down several floors of the facility. 
And the highlight for me, was the outdoor heated pool overlooking the
mountains.  The whole facility is huge
and really, really top class.  It’s clean
and calm and just a really nice place to visit, especially when the weather is
keeping you indoors. The first night we went there was a huge snow storm while
we were visiting and we would swim out into the outdoor pool and our hair would
immediately be covered in snow and icicles. 
Like I said, in the span of five days, we visited the pool twice, which
I think counts as a pretty solid recommendation for when traveling in Tromso
with kids.  Unfortunately, cameras and
phones are pretty strictly prohibited so I don’t have any photos from our visit
(also it’s really hard to carry an iphone as you swim from one area
to another (you don’t really ever get out of the water to go between the pools,
unless you are doing the water slides, which I most definitely left up to Paul and
Nora).

The only picture I got was us leaving Tromsobadet in a snowstorm.  Google it.

Reindeer!

Since we had pretty much given up
on the Northern Lights, we decided to try to make the most out of our time in
Tromso by booking another excursion.  We
settled on a trip to visit a Sami reindeer camp.  We were picked up in town and taken by bus
out to a reindeer camp where we would get to feed and take a sleigh ride with
reindeer.  During the summer, the Sami herders
allow their reindeer to roam free, but because of climate change, they have had
to start bringing them down by the water for food in the winter.  I have to tell you, I was shocked at how
small reindeer are!  In my mind reindeer
were like moose or something.  I was
imagining the giant creatures we see pulling Santa in all of the movies.  In reality, they are pretty small.  But still really cool looking.  After a quick orientation, we were able to
grab buckets of food and wonder out into the fields and feed the reindeer.  We were warned that reindeer aren’t really
friendly.  It’s not that they are
dangerous or aggressive, far from it. 
It’s just that they aren’t social in any way.  So some really stayed away, but plenty were
willing to come up and eat from our tubs of food.  It was really fun feeding them and honestly the
scenery just could not have been more beautiful.  We took a sleigh ride pulled by the reindeer,
which I will say wasn’t really all that exciting (more of a very slow trudge),
but did give us time to really take in our beautiful surroundings.

After the sleigh rides, it was
time for lunch, which was served inside traditional Sami huts.  We were all served cookies and stew and
y’all, don’t tell Nora this: the stew was reindeer stew and she had two
helpings! I have to admit, it was a helluva lot better than Dinty Moore. 

The face of a reindeer eater.

After lunch, the whole group gathered
around a raging fire as the snow poured down outside and our Sami guide traditional
Sami songs and talked to us about her heritage and the persecution her people
had face historically (and even still to this day).  It was such a moving experience.  More than once during her presentation I was
moved to tears.  I kept thinking “THIS is
why we are doing this whole thing.  THIS
is what I want Nora to take away from the entire trip.”

The Lights!

And now for THE highlight of the
entire trip.  We saw the Northern
Lights!  It was the night day before our
last in town and we’d spent the day lazing around the house and running a few errands.  We knew the weather forecast was all day cloud cover and possible snow, but we kept noticing that it wasn’t really clouding over like expected.  We went for a late afternoon tea and when we walked out after we looked up and saw a clear sky with the moon shining down and at that moment we decided we just had to go for it.  We hightailed it to the apartment, layered up as quickly as we could, and ran to the bus to take us over to the Fjellheisen Cable Car, a cable car that runs from town up Mount Storsteinen for wide open views over Tromso.  While we were waiting for the bus we could see light gray streaks in the sky and Paul held up his phone (for some reason, I think it’s because of the exposure time, phones can pick up the lights better than the human eye) and we could clearly see the Northern Lights. I was sooo excited to get up to the top of the cable car! It’s funny, because I thought the lights we were seeing in our phones were so cool. I had no idea what was in store.

Once we got to the top of the cable car we went outside and walked a tiny bit further up the mountain (like 15 feet) and HOLY COW it was amazing!! The lights were swirling wildly overhead. They were mostly green but at one point they got tons of pink in them and you could actually see the pink shooting through the lines of green. It was breathtaking. I mean I really was teary eyed and breathless watching. When the pink started flowing through I remember saying, “Oh my God Nora, LOOK!” She scolded me for using God’s name inappropriately and all I could say was, “No, Nora, I think this really is God.”

It was sooooo cold, my guess is 12 degrees, especially when you have to take your glove off to take pictures. We stayed out for about half an hour. It was so amazing I can’t put it in words. We decided to go inside to warm up and have a bite to eat (there’s actually a restaurant right at the top of the cable car). We had a reindeer burger and Nora had sausage. By the time we were done the lights were gone. Talk about amazing luck.  Everything randomly lined up so exactly perfectly that we got to see an amazing show.

Obviously nothing competes with the Northern Lights, but here are just a few other fun times we had in Tromso.

Watching the Olympics.  Nora made an American Flag out of crafts and would hang it whenever the U.S. won.

Our date-anniversary.  Paul and I celebrated 15 years of dating.

Makeovers.  Nora found her inner makeup artist, with a particular flare for eyeliner. The Views.  Oh, my heart and the views.