I had six days above the Arctic Circle, six chances to see the midnight sun, and finally on the last day in Tromso, we got a cloudless night and the sun! We thought we weren't going to see it because the forecast had called for rain the entire weekend, but we got a beautiful day on Saturday, and the clouds held off until 3am or so, long enough for us to see that the sun indeed did not set.
Saturday afternoon we took the cable car up Storsteimen, a hill overlooking Tromso. The views were amazing, and there were paragliders launching from the hill that conveniently positioned themselves as subjects in our photos. We stayed up top for a couple hours, the first view of the sun we had had in a while.
Tanya went back up the cable car for the midnight sun, (the city of Tromso is on the south side of a hill, so there's no direct sunlight at midnight); I stayed in town because I wanted different pictures. We met back up around 1:30ish, and had the odd feeling of going out in broad daylight for the start of a *night* out. Bar hopped again. The Lonely Planet says that at any given moment, 50% of the population of Tromso is out having a drink, and from what we saw, that's probably true. We've adjusted to the sticker shock, and NOK 150 seemed normal for a round (pint of Mack beer and a vodka cooler). (But if you do the math, that's $30 CDN).
Sunday we had the day to kill waiting for our flight back to Oslo at 9pm. It was a crappy weather day again (we've only had about 10 hours of sunlight on this trip, but we've got all the pictures we wanted, so it's no so bad. But anyone looking at the pics will assume we had great weather the whole time!) So we went to a couple museums, the Polar Museum and Polaria. We hadn't planned to go the Polar Museum, but Tanya got confused with the names and so we saw the Polar Museum before realizing it wasn't Polaria. The Polar Museum was all about Roald Amundsen, the first person to reach the south pole (also happened to be Norwegian). However most of the descriptions were non-English (there was more in Norwegian, German, and French).
Polaria was pretty cool, they have a lot of marine life and feeding time for the seals is especially popular with tourists.
Had dinner at Steakers (a steak house), and then caught the flight back to Oslo. The airports are frighteningly efficient here. From hotel door to boarding gate took us 35 minutes, and we even took a public bus to get to the airport. The e-ticket is extended all the way to the boarding gate; you self-check in and get luggage tags, give your bags over, and then at the gate, run your choice of id through a card reader (I used my Visa card) and up pops up a boarding pass, just before you board. So there's no chance to lose the ticket! Very cool.
It's just as well we haven't had great weather the whole time, because I nearly used up my 256 MB memory card on my camera. Only had room for nine more pictures! I've downloaded them to my Powerbook (which I had left at the hotel) so I have room again.
Over the next few days, Tanya's heading off either to the south, or to Stockholm to visit a friend, while I schmooze at the conference here in Oslo.
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