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Published: June 29th 2010
Seal
They're so cute =)I’m going to put the past two days into one entry since I really didn’t do much today - I bussed to Narvik from Tromso which took up a good chunk of the day, and then spent the afternoon/evening organizing for Sweden and just puttering around the town and mall. Narvik really isn’t that big.
Anyway, back to Tromso!
I arrived Sunday night - it was raining and foggy. Lovely. My taxi ride to the hostel was funny haha. The guy spoke limited English, but we started chatting about Canada - “ah, donc vous parlez le francais?” Ahaha, awesome! His French was worse than his English (by his own admission), but it felt nice to speak French for the first time in over 2 weeks haha. I of course explained that not ALL Canadians speak both… ahem. “But you do” Yes… because I’m French Canadian, and I live near the French part of the country…haha.
Monday (yesterday) was a jam-packed day. I started off my adventure by wandering around town for a bit. The core itself is quite small, so I saw most of it before heading off to “Polaria” which is a Polar Museum - it had
Leaving Tromso
The cloud cover at the beginning of the journey - was only going to get worse a few nice documentaries on Svalbard (sp?) and other northern regions - the landscapes are just amazing. They also have a seal pool - they were feeding the girls when I got there, so I went for a look. They’re bearded seals so they are HUGE. Still cute though, and smart little things. I think my fav trick was “Oh no, did you hear - Michael Jackson’s dead!” *seal puts flipper in front of mouth* GASP hahaha.
(Sidenote: every time I see a bearded seal I think back to that horribly warped episode of Pingu - when he has that dream that the seal eats everything… youtube pingu seal episode haha. If you saw it as a child, you will remember it)
Anyway, while at Polaria I was asked to do a customer satisfaction survey from Northern Norway tourist info people... okfine? The survey made me laugh... in the section where rate between 'completely disagree to completely agree' they had a few gems such as: "This attraction helps me to feel acceptable to others" and "This attraction gives me social approval from others". However, my absolute fav was: "This attraction gives me feelings of wellbeing" HAHA, I love
it.
After Polaria I was doing a tour - 4 hours by bus, 4 hours by boat… considering it was about 10-15 degrees on land, I knew it would be cold at sea, so I headed off in search of another sweater to replace the one I lost. Bugger. I went to H&M (why on Earth they have *2* and Ottawa can’t have one I don’t understand… but kfine), and got a nice one there. Good to go!
Bus ride was beautiful - we went east and north, crossing over all sorts of fjords, going through one-lane bridges (ah, how Icelandic!) and just enjoying the coastline. We even saw an eagle at one point - very majestic.
We took two ferries along the way, each ride was about 20min long. That was fun - I spent one on the front deck lapping up the wind, and the second one I sat inside and enjoyed a nice cup of coffee… my first cup since I left home haha. It was nice =)
It was funny on the first boat - there was a mom and daughter from Australia on the deck with me. I asked them to
Love the colours
View from the second ferry ride take a photo for me and the mom started nagging me that my camera lens was dirty haha. She grabbed my scarf (while I’m wearing it) and started to clean it.
From Skjervoy we got straight on to the Hurtigruten - the cruise ships of all cruise ships. The entire reason I chose this tour (besides the fact it was the only one that didn’t cost an arm and a leg) was that I didn’t want to come all the way to Norway and not at least step foot on the boat.
So there you go! At this point it was super overcast and windy… not the best boating conditions, but I didn’t care. I could live on a boat - I love it no matter the weather. I sat out on the deck in my light blue sweater while everyone else was shuffling around in winter coats and was grabbing blankets from inside. Yeahhhh, I kind of stood out as being either from a Northern country, or for being a complete fool.
One of the boat staff actually came up to me and told me there were blankets inside haha, I’m like no thanks - I’m
good =)
The Aussie mom (Trish) and daughter (Sara) were sitting beside me, so we got to talking. First they asked how I wasn’t cold haha - which led us into a lovely talk about me being from Canada. They were good - they didn’t ask the stereotypical questions about the country (haha) but rather had some good questions which are always fun to answer. Turns out Sara was at Oslo on exchange and was just visiting around since term is over. Funny enough, her second choice after Oslo had been Toronto - I chuckled. Yeah, you def picked the right one..!
They went inside for a bit (too cold), but I stayed out on the deck. I will admit it was getting a tad chilly - so I put on my new sweater haha. Good to go! I had brought “Man’s Search for Meaning” with me, so I read that for awhile. Perfect book to be reading out on the waters.
Sara came back out after about an hour - she too loves boats and couldn’t take sitting inside. We spent the next few hours just chatting about university life, about our countries, about Norway, and
On the Hurtigruten
Clouds were super low, super foggy. Very eerie feeling on the boat - but loved it! other places we’ve been. It was really quite lovely! Her mom joined us for the last hour on the boat, although we did go inside for a bit since they were freezing again. They had "smuggled" hot chocolate powder on board haha, so we got hot water from the kitchen and enjoyed our chocolatey goodness. Yum.
Another funny moment was when we passed the Hurtigruten going the other way - there was a challenge! Sacre bleu! So we all went out on deck and were told to make as much noise as possible haha. People were waving towels and blankets, crew men had taken the flag down and were waving that, kitchen staff were banging pot lids haha. It was absolutely hilarious to watch and take part in. Although the other boat had more people, we had a better horn. I say we win.
And there was the brief glimmer of sunlight at one point - we’re like “OMG SUNNNNN” haha. This led into a convo about how weird it must be too have so much darkness during the winter, as ompared to the amount of sunlight (ie. 24hrs a day haha) during summer.
Just before we
got to the dock, we realized we were all staying at the hostel; sweet… taxi carpooling!! Haha. We had just missed the last bus (it was midnight), but by splitting the taxi it ended up costing about the same as the bus which is fine by me.
So, that was my Nordic experience. As I said, today was spent mostly on a bus… I can’t believe it’s been two weeks already in Norway. I’m ready to move on to Sweden, but still sad to go… it’s a beautiful country - I’ve absolutely loved it here!
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