Tromsø, Norway

We came by land back down to Tromsø, and the bad weather has followed us around. It's been raining on-and-off for at least the last two days, and cold (5C) for this time of year.

The bus ride from Alta to here was pretty cool, the bus went on two ferries along the six hour trip. For me the journey is just as fun as being in places. I was sitting up on deck on the ferry, looking at the sides of the fjords and the low-hanging clouds, with the red-painted houses on the shore, and for some reason, it didn't feel like Norway. For example, when I was on a boat going down the Mekong, it felt like I was on a boat going down the Mekong. But here I had to think about where I actually was. Maybe it's because I didn't have a stereotypical image of Norway? Anyways it was a weird feeling.

We stopped in Tromsø on the coastal steamer ride on our way up, and so we were already familiar with the town. There's quite a bit to do here, hopefully the weather will co-operate!

We were pretty bored in Alta, mostly because of the weather, and we were only there for 24 hours. We saw the rock paintings (the main highlight of Alta), but that only took a couple hours. We meant to climb a hill for a cool view of the town, but the hilltop was hidden in a cloud so we wouldn't have seen anything. Then it started raining which turned to snow, and so we just stayed indoors. Unfortunately there's no indoor stuff to do in Alta. So we spent most of the time watching HBO and CNN.

According to the Lonely Planet, Tromsø is a party town, with the highest per-capita of pubs in Norway. We're going to check it out later on, people don't start going out until midnight.