OK, I just read through my past posts, trying to figure out how to proceed with my trip summary. I’m going to start with Feb 7th. I’m not sure how many days I will include in each summary since there are a ton of photos, so, we’ll see how I break it out. [Now that I have written the entire post, I may do a day by day breakdown, depending on how much happened on a given day. Feb 7 had a lot in it, so that’s all I’m writing about in this particular post. I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this! Ha!]
So, Feb 7. We flew from Oslo to Kirkenes.
First up is a view of Kirkenes from the plane as we approached. Note how low the sun is – it was about 11am!
This is the Kirkenes Airport – pretty dang small!
The big dark grey building is actually a shopping mall – this photo was taken from the bus we took into town. We did end up going into the mall – at least, we went into one store that had sporting goods, just to see what they had. Pretty decent selection!
This grocery store was across the street from our hotel. I thought I had looked up the translation for ‘joker’ previously and it said ‘grocer’ but I just looked again and it just says ‘joker.’ Oh well.
View of a fjord with the Thon Hotel to the right. The Thon was a bigger nicer hotel than the one we stayed in – we walked inside to check it out.
We had lunch at a restaurant called ‘Surf &Turf.’ Menu was as you would expect. Beer was good! The notable thing about this lunch is – I ordered a fried calamari appetizer, a sandwich, and this beer. This was our first full day in Norway, and in my head (because I didn’t look it up right), I was thinking that 100NKR=$8. This was incorrect! It was more like 100NKR = $12. My lunch cost $600NKR. I didn’t really think about it at the time, but I checked my credit card bill yesterday and this lunch cost $76!!!! I knew Norway was expensive, and granted we were in a somewhat remote village with a population of about 3,400 people, so, I guess I get it. But still!
[UPDATE!! – I mentioned the lunch cost to Louise and she reminded me that I paid for her lunch as well. So, it was $76 for two lunches, not just mine. That makes me feel better!}
I know this photo is dark, but it was during our dog sledge – we stopped for a warm bit of cloudberry juice and a warm up by a fire. It was about 4:30pm!
Here’s a couple shots after our dog sledge – that’s me on the left – pretty bundled up! It was cold! I did not want to have my glove off but I had to show the guy how to take a photo with my phone! Louise took this photo.
And this is where the doggies live. They have their meals on top of their houses. And these dogs LOVE to run! When we took off, all the dogs that weren’t on our ride where going nuts because they wanted to be running with us!
After the dog sledge, which was located outside the Snow Hotel, we decided to have dinner there too. We passed some cute little cabins that are also connected with the Ice Hotel, and then went into a nice warm room.
The dinner started off by learning a bit of history of Kirkenes, and a ‘snack’ of reindeer sausage. Yes, I ate one. It wasn’t anything different than any other sausage – nothing really notable about the taste or anything. Not really all that good. But when in Rome (or Norway) …
And then on to the Snow Hotel
There were 24 rooms in total. Each room had a curtain for a door, and each room was unique. It was plenty cold in there, that’s for sure!
At the end of this hallway (12 rooms on each side) there is a ‘warm room.’ This is where you get your sleeping bag, socks, hat and gloves. And this is where the bathrooms are also. They did a demo of how to get in and out of the sleeping bag – it is a ‘mummy’ type bag that was rated for temperatures as low as -10oC if I remember correctly. I think the temperature in the rooms was around -4oC. So, if you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, it is not trivial. Louise and I were happy with the tour and felt no need to stay there!
Prior to dinner we decided to have a drink, so, of course, I had some Aquavit.
Note that the back of this bottle has two dates – May 4, 2016, and September 3, 2016. Once the Aquavit is bottled, it travels by ship to Australia and back. The two dates are the date it left and the date it came back. From the Linie website:
LINIE is a potato-based spirit, distilled in pot stills with a special blend of Nordic herbs and spices to give it its distinct flavour. The young spirit is placed in Spanish Oloroso sherry casks to develop further. Ultimately the casks are sent on a sea journey across the world to mature.
The result is an extraordinarily smooth and well balanced aquavit with leading notes of caraway and star anise – and finer hints of vanilla and sherry.
For dinner we had a starter of mushroom soup, and the main course was Arctic Char with sugarsalted roe, cauliflower, apple and fennel sauce, and Gulloye potato:
Dessert was Chocolate and Lingonberry limesnow, brownies, and lingonberry mousse. That’s snow on top of the ice cream!
An uneventful ride back to our hotel followed dinner, and then we went hunting the Northern Lights with a couple from Australia that we met at dinner. What we thought was a cloud turned out to be the northern lights! This one was rather weak, so it wasn’t moving. And, I learned that most of the time the northern lights look ‘white’ because the naked eye can’t pick up the colors. But, somebody took a photo of the ‘cloud’ and when we looked at it in the photo, it was green! And, in a true “there’s an app for that” moment, we found out that there is, indeed, an app for seeing what the odds are for you seeing the Northern Lights in your location. There is something called the KP Index – the bigger the number the better your chance of seeing them. The app I downloaded is called “Aurora” but there are others.
All right! I think this was enough for one post. Catch up with you soon! The next post will include some scenes from Kirkenes and us embarking on our boat, the Nordnorge!