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Published: October 21st 2018
Tromso
View towards the Arctic CathedralWe’re about half way through our trip now and currently having a “day off”; mainly because the weather is miserable but also because we recognise the pleasure of not being on the go all the time. As I write this we are in Alesund which is about ¾ of the way down the Norwegian coastline. We started our Norwegian travels in Tromso, the largest city in northern Norway. It’s also where we boarded the daily Hurtigruten “mailboat” (we were on the MS Nordkapp) for our journey south along the Norwegian coastline. We could have started our journey a little further north in a small town called Kirkenes, close to the Russian border. However, I wanted to spend time in a couple of Norwegian towns along the way and I also have a tendency towards motion sickness, so I wasn’t too enthusiastic about spending almost 2 days on a boat on the open sea in the Arctic. I’m pretty pleased with this decision as Tromso was a very pleasant place to spend a few days.
The main part of Tromso is located on the island of Tromsoya and is connected to the suburbs on an adjacent island and the mainland by
a series of bridges. The population of the city is around 75000 and so it has a nice feel to it. In contrast to Australians living in a similar sized town, most people seemed to travel around town using the local bus service. I’m not sure if this is a cultural “thing” or if it’s due to the cost of petrol here – currently about 2.90 AUD per litre. We stayed close to the centre of town and it wasn’t busy. The old part of town is a mix of oldish and new architecture with lots of hairdressers – so many hairdressers. Lots of the shops and restaurants are in old buildings but they have a very flash-looking library built in a very modern style. We did the usual tourist things – went to the local museum, walked around the streets, did a tour through the local 141-year old brewery and caught the bus and cable car up to the nearby lookout. I had hoped that we might manage a tour to look for the northern lights (Aurora borealis) whilst in Tromso but the weather was cloudy, and frequently raining, so we didn’t even try. On our last night, a
Tromso
Shop facades few hours before we caught the ship, I walked outside to have a look for the aurora. I did see a couple of weak flashes of light grey-green but nothing like the glorious photographs that you see on the web and advertising aurora-hunting trips in Tromso. It wasn’t even worth getting my camera out for as each episode only lasted about a minute, but I guess I can at least say that I have seen an aurora. Our last night in Tromso was spent on a Hurtigruten tour to the Arctic Cathedral to listen to the midnight concert. This was a selection of folk and classical music put on by a trio of a soprano, flautist and pianist -they were very good. We’d visited the cathedral earlier that day and Terry had commented that he thought the acoustics of the space would be horrible as it’s all hard, flat surfaces – he couldn’t have been further from the truth.
We eventually boarded the ship at about 1:30 am and were allocated our cabin. For various reasons I didn’t book our trip until about 4 weeks before its departure and by the time I did they had limited cabin availability.
Tromso
View from cable car station We had an outside cabin on the 3
rd deck but I think we were pretty lucky with our allocation. We ended up with one of the “invalid” cabins which came complete with folded up wheelchair, an invalid wet room for bathroom and one of the bunks was a hospital-style bed on wheels. The advantage was that it was probably 30%!w(MISSING)ider than the other cabins and so we had much more room than we expected. Our first night out was amongst the islands and fjords of the northern coastline. When we awoke it was to views of calm sea surrounded by snow covered mountains. The scenery on that first day was magnificent and the weather in the afternoon was sunny so now we had blue sky, some cloud and snow-covered mountains. In the most scenic part of the trip the mountains arising from the fjords were up to 1200 m high. The highlight of Day 1 was the 540-degree pirouette that the ship completed at the end of the very narrow Trollfjord. The fjord is only 2 km long, at its narrowest it is 100 m wide but broadens to a maximum width of 800m. As the ship progressed further
Tromso
View from cable car station southwards my perception is that the offshore islands became less mountainous and that on our last day they were low-lying rocky affairs. Both of us have been surprised at the amount of farming that is carried out in what we perceive as being quite isolated parts of the country. There weren’t many parts of the trip where you could not see a few farmhouses on the adjacent shore. When the ship stops at a port the stop may be anything from 15 minutes to a couple of hours. They also run tours from various stops and these may catch up with the ship a couple of hours later at the next port. We didn’t do any of the tours, but we did leave the ship at a couple of the longer stops. For me the highlight was Trondheim. We ended up only having about an hour for sightseeing in Trondheim but what we saw early on that sunny, Sunday morning was very attractive. It’s autumn of course and so the autumn leaves of the trees were vivid with the sun at such a low angle. Once again, the architecture of the town is lovely with well-maintained old wooden buildings lining
On the Hurtigruten
Day 1 - in the Vesteralen district the canal in the oldest part of town. The spire of the Nidaros Cathedral dominates in that part of town also. Trondheim was the nation’s first capital during the Viking era and is still the coronation city for Norway’s kings.
The three full days that we had on the ship were enough for me – if it wasn’t for the magnificent scenery and periodic jaunts around Deck 5 to take photos I would have gone crazy. The food was good, almost too good, for the exercise I managed on a cold and rainy second day. The seas were mainly calm but there were a few periods where we were in the open and I felt unwell due to the movement of the ship in the swell – drugs have been a godsend and I’ve purchased more for our final leg starting tomorrow night. I’m rather glad that we were only able to get a cabin on Deck 3 rather than a more luxurious cabin on Deck 5 or 6.
As I mentioned above we are currently in Alesund. Our arrival in Alesund was a little more eventful than we like. Firstly, there were no taxis at the pier
On the Hurtigruten
Vesteralen District to meet the ship, but we were lucky to find one dropping a passenger at a nearby hotel. It was very windy and threatening rain. My phone SIM does not work in Norway it seems – I didn’t realise this until I tried to use the phone. Eventually we arrived at our AirBnB accommodation at around 1:00 am with instructions how to enter the building and the apartment. All good and the taxi leaves. We found the key safe hidden as described and entered the combination number given to us – nothing. Try again, and again and eventually ask for help from some residents still awake in the building. They helped us by trying to prise open the key safe and then called our “landlord” who, strangely enough, wasn’t answering his phone at 1:30 am. Thankfully there were 2 hotels nearby and so we walked to one of those and had a very comfortable night in the most expensive hotel in town. It was a bit of a toss up as to whether to leave there or not the following morning. A quick message to our “landlord” was answered with apologies and acknowledgement that he’d changed the combination on the
On the Hurtigruten
Vesteralen district key safe but had not given us the new number in his message as to how to access the building – he also refunded that night’s accommodation. I was just pleased that the key safe opened with the correct number as Terry informed me that one of our good Samaritans used a knuckle-duster to encourage the safe to open the previous night.
During WW2 Alesund was described as “Little London” because of all the illegal resistance activity in the town and because so many people managed to escape to England via Alesund. It’s also known for its Art Nouvea architecture. In 1904 much of the town was destroyed by fire which started at a preserving factory. The flames of the fire were fanned by a storm from the southwest with winds gusting to hurricane strength. I’m guessing that at the time most of the buildings were constructed from wood. The result is a town centre that is uniform in its design, and façade modernisations from the 1960s and 70s have since been reversed to take them back to the original designs of 1904-1907. A lot of the shops and hotels along the waterfront are now housed in what were
On the Hurtigruten
Vesteralen or Lofoten District originally warehouses and fish factories. Portions of the waterfront have been reclaimed and are now streets and squares. These old warehouses are magnificent. The fancy hotel that we stayed in on our first night was in one of these - the first-floor reception area was notable for the original oak beams and trusses that were a feature of both the reception area and the large void that extended to the upper floors.
I think that it’s reasonable to say that Norway is probably the most expensive place we’ve ever visited. A coffee costs about $7.50, a 400 ml beer is $16 and a glass of wine runs around $20. On the ship they were selling bottles of Hardy’s Nottage Hill Cab-Shiraz for about $95 – it’s around $10 at home. A simple meal out (pizza to share plus glass of wine each) cost us about $75. However, rest assured, we aren’t going without!!!
It's now a week and a bit since I last wrote in this blog. We’re currently in Stockholm and head to Helsinki tomorrow – it’s time to add bits while I can still remember the bits I want to record.
We spent an extra
day in Alesund than we would normally have taken just so we could do a tour on the Geiranger Fjord, a World Heritage site. One of the disadvantages of travelling in shoulder season is that some attractions are either closed or running reduced services. We do have the advantage of not sharing our experience with crowds of other tourists. In October the Geiranger goes from daily summer trips to twice weekly; hence our need to stay a day longer in Alesund. I’m so glad that we did. There were 7 tourists taking the cruise and the weather was a marked improvement on the continuous rain of the previous day. The first hour or so was spent sailing past the industrial part of Alesund and then through more picturesque areas that seemed to be flash holiday homes or homes of retirees. Alesund is the centre of the cod fish industry and has been throughout history. Further along the fjord there were fewer settlements although the tour commentary pointed out the location of old farms – normally located on a small piece of flat land on the edge of a cliff. These farms have all been abandoned now due to the difficulty
On the Hurtigruten
Trollfjord - Lofoten District of living in those areas and because of the avalanche risk. The highlight of the upper reaches of the fjord was the waterfalls. Until then I’d never seen so many waterfalls visible in one place. Norway receives 98% of its electricity from hydro and given these waterfalls you can see why. The hydro stations we saw were relatively small in appearance and not a blight on the amazing beauty of the environment – they supply the power to the nearby small town. I assume that there are larger hydro stations elsewhere. I’m pretty sure that we were told that the fjord was 650 metres deep and the mountains rose to 850 metres. We had a 3-hour stop in the small town of Geiranger and so we hired a small electric car to take us up the mountain to view the fjord from above. We returned to Alesund that afternoon and later caught the midnight Hurtigruten to Bergen.
The weather that next day was magic – beautiful blue skies and warm. When we arrived in Bergen we went straight up on the funicular railroad to see the view over Bergen and the fjords. We seem to have caught the mid-semester
On the Hurtigruten
Ship's pirouette in Trollfjord break as the park at the top of funicular was full of families with school-aged kids and people walking/running the trails of the forested area. Bergen is bigger than Alesund and much more touristy. I first became aware of Bergen as it was the home of the Bergen School of Meteorolgy and is quite famous in the meteorological field. Terry has wanted to visit Bergen for many years it seems. I found out that in the early 1950s, when he was around 20 y.o., a friend and he planned to do a motorbike tour to Bergen but had to cancel as they couldn’t afford the surety (the value of their bikes) that the UK Govt required them to put up at the time. Anyway, Bergen was the capital of Norway during medieval times and has the remains of a tower and hall to prove it. Haakon’s Hall was built in the mid-13
th century by King Haakon after he was annoyed by having his parade literally rained upon – apparently it rained on him and his international guests at the time of his coronation. Marks on the stonework suggest that some of the stonemasons that built the hall were from Scotland.
On the Hurtigruten
Norway has LOTS of bridges The hall was badly damaged by the explosion, in the harbour, of a German vessel carrying explosives during WW2 and has since been rebuilt. It’s now used for royal dinners and other cultural events. We did a walking tour of Bergen on a very wet day and found that the street we were staying on was the oldest street in Norway. The town grew to prominence as it was a major trading post for the Hanseatic League, a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns in Northwest and Central Europe. In Bergen there were around 3000 single German men living in warehouses and fulfilling the trading requirements of their companies in the Hanseatic League. It was all about fish and these blokes lived amongst the fish that they were sending south to Germany and beyond – no wonder they were single!!! Some of the houses that they lived in still exist and are now a World Heritage site housing restaurants and gift shops. These days Bergen is important for shipping and the offshore oil industry and has a population of around 250,000. In summer the port can take 7 cruise ships per day, although the city is
On the Hurtigruten
Crossing the Arctic Circle now limiting numbers to 5 per day, which means up to 30,000 tourists per day in the city.
We travelled from Bergen to Oslo by train as part of a 1-day “Norway in a Nutshell” tour. In addition to the normal Bergen-Oslo railway we broke the trip with a 1-hour bus trip to a fjord, a trip along the fjord (Aurlandsfjord - so many more waterfalls) and a 1-hour trip back to the main railroad via the historic Flam railroad. Terry thought this the best part of the trip. The railroad goes from sea level at the fjord to 866 m over 20 km, goes through 20 tunnels, passes numerous huge waterfalls and does a 180-degree turn through a tunnel. The weather when we left Bergen was horrible and we doubted whether it was worth doing this already-paid-for trip as we thought visibility would be horrible. We’re so glad that we took the easy way out and continued with our plans, even if it meant another midnight arrival in Oslo.
Our accommodation in Oslo was in the old town and across the road from the cemetery – it was very quiet. For me it was interesting to see
how the locals used this piece of “parkland”. People walked through it, rode their bikes along the paths and most importantly it was an area to walk dogs and meet with the other dog owners for a chat. Oslo itself was pleasant with a skyline bristling with cranes. The new construction in the waterfront area is staggering. They’ve recently completed a 3.3 billion NOK ($0.500 billion) opera and ballet house and are currently building a new library and a new museum for the works of the artist Edvard Munch of “The Scream” fame. Further along the waterfront there is a new museum of modern art and many new apartment buildings. We both thought many of the new apartment buildings ugly as most are a very dark brown with black trim. I particularly enjoyed our visit to the Flam museum on the outskirts of Oslo. We took the bus out through the “well-heeled” part of town, home to various consulates, and then out past the Royal Farm to the “Mornington Peninsula” of Oslo. The Flam museum is dedicated to the explorations of the polar explorers of the late 19
th and early 20
th century, especially Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen. I hadn’t
realised until then that Amundsen was the leader of the first expedition to traverse the Northwest Passage in addition to his later successful expedition to the South Pole. These early explorers learnt many of their survival skills from the Inuit of Greenland, they dressed in skins like the Inuit for their expeditions. On the South Pole expedition, they often travelled around 20 miles per day skiing and dog-sledding and when they ascended the Antarctic Plateau they climbed 11000 feet in 4 days. I bet they weren’t carrying any fat. We also went to the ballet in Oslo. We saw “Manon”; about a young handsome bloke and a rich, older man who are both looking to win the attention of an attractive young woman (Manon). To cut a long story short, it doesn’t end well.
One of the things we’ve learnt about are the incentives that the Norwegian Govt has put in place to encourage the purchase of electric vehicles. They aim to have all new car purchases in 2025 be EVs and these days more than 50% of new car sales are EVs. There are tax and registration incentives in place, zero tolls paid by EVs and they are
recharged for free. A Tesla in Norway is much cheaper than the same car in the UK due to the tax breaks, but the Nissan Leaf is the most common of the EVs. I guess they are paying for these subsidies by selling most of their offshore oil and gas.
We’ve had the last couple of days in Stockholm after travelling by train from Oslo via Gothenburg. We had a 7 am start so for the first couple of hours it was dark and mostly very foggy but as we got closer to Gothenburg it gradually cleared up. The scenery along the way was pleasant; mainly undulating farmland interspersed with lots of lakes. Quite a few of the lakes were surrounded by holiday homes and cabins with little jetties into the lake. There didn’t seem to be anything growing in the fields at this time of year but the farm buildings were picturesque – a farmhouse and a few large, reddish-brown barns with white trims around the doors and windows. No photos from this part of the trip unfortunately as the windows of the train were extremely dirty. Stockholm is very attractive and, I think, more picturesque than Oslo.
It’s set on an archipelago (I don’t think I realised that until just prior to our trip) and we are staying on the once working-class southern island of Sodermalm. Lonely Planet tells me it’s now the coolest neighbourhood although I doubt that we stayed in that bit. It’s a very busy area with a shopping centre and metro station across the road; thankfully our apartment is very quiet. Commuting by bike is very common and at peak hour the bike lanes are packed with cyclists travelling to/from work. There don’t seem to be many fancy road bikes in the mix, no lurid lycra to be seen at this time of year and many bikes come complete with a basket on the front and perhaps a child seat on the back. Most cyclists wear a helmet. Our first day in Stockholm was spent walking the narrow streets and alleys of the oldest part of Stockholm, Gamla Stan. The main street of Gamla Stan was lined with restaurants and souvenir shops but you didn’t need to walk far to get away from most tourists. We didn’t do much apart from enjoy the atmosphere and vista of old buildings lining the waterfront wherever
MS Nordkapp
Berthed at Trondheim you looked. We walked back to our apartment that afternoon through the residential streets. It was nice – people were dog walking, playing with kids in the park, shopping etc. Our second day was a ferry trip to Djurgarden, one of the islands of Stockholm. Once upon a time it was the royal game park, these days it is a leafy park and home to a number of museums. We’d been told by some locals and our Lonely Planet that the Vasa Museum was the best museum in Stockholm and an ex-colleague told me that the ABBA Museum was lots of fun. Neither of us are great ABBA fans but for me they do bring back fond memories from late teenager years and early adulthood. The museum was okay, with lots of info about their history, displays of music awards and some of their well-known costumes. The musically inclined could also record themselves singing ABBA songs etc. ABBA music was playing all the time and my biggest concern was that I’d leave the museum with a “Ring Ring”, “Waterloo” or “Money Money Money” earworm – I didn’t. The Vasa Museum was all about an early 17
th Century ship – the
Vasa. The Vasa was built on the orders of the Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus in an effort to prove to his Polish cousin that he was head bloke in the Baltic. The ship that he ordered was built by Dutch shipbuilders in an era when design was experimental. He ordered the warship to be state of the art with a huge firepower and so ended up with a ship carrying sixty-four 24-pound cannons over two decks, extra strengthening (ie. weight) of the ship due the weight of the cannons and cannon balls. I think King Gus had a good size ego as he also ordered ornate decoration; the ship was elaborately decorated with carved statues on the stern and along the sides of the ship. The result was a ship that was top heavy, too narrow and very unstable. It sunk 1500 m from shore and 15-20 mins after leaving port. Most people passengers and crew were able to escape and only about 30 perished they believe. When the ship sank it was into an environment that was conducive to its preservation, or at least lack of deterioration. The cold, brackish waters of the Baltic are not suitable for shipworm
and the pollution of the day also helped in this respect. The ship was salvaged in the 1960s and then dried out, preserved and rebuilt using more than 90% of the original timbers. The museum that houses the rebuilt ship was opened in 1990. It’s a pretty impressive sight sitting in the half light inside this huge void.
Our trip to Geiranger marked the beginning of the autumn foliage display – it was at its peak there and as we’ve moved south we seem to have followed the colour. Now, at the end of our time in Scandinavia, the trees are starting to lose their leaves, all the colour is on the ground, little kids are running through and throwing the leaves, and the trees are showing the beauty of their skeletons.
We’re now in Helsinki and have just completed the last day of our Scandinavian sightseeing. Helsinki seems a bit colder than Oslo and Stockholm and the trees here are almost naked. We’ve only had one day for sightseeing in Helsinki but to be honest that’s probably been enough for the city itself. Our main activity has been basically wandering through the older part of town but
we did visit three churches during our wanders. The first was the Orthodex Cathedral which sits on a rocky outcrop above the harbour. It looks quite impressive from the outside and internally is decorated with plenty of religious art. When we entered the church, a choir was practicing before their afternoon concert – they sounded pretty good to me. We also visited the Helsinki Cathedral, the main Lutheran Church in town. This is a large, white building that sits in the Central Square; in Lutheran tradition it’s very plain on the inside although it’s position, high above the Square, makes it look impressive from the outside. Our final church visit was to “The Rock” church, another Lutheran Church but this time hewn from the local rock. The church was built in 1969 and basically a circular void was blasted from the rock. Rock and concrete have been used to create a level base for the roof, a domed affair of glass panels on the edge and copper strips arranged in concentric rings on the inside. There are no pillars in the church itself and so the space is one of lots of light that has a very calm and natural
Alesund
Art Nouveau buildings feel. The acoustics are great, and the church is frequently used for concerts. We finished off with a trip to the National Museum but didn’t stay long.
Since we’ve been in Scandinavia we’ve sampled a variety of travel options – planes, trains and automobiles (taxis) plus buses, boats, ships and trams. Tomorrow we head to the airport just after lunch, ready for our trip to Japan. We’re looking forwards to the warmer weather of Kyoto for the first few days of our trip. We have no plans for our time after Kyoto so it will be interesting to see what we end up doing.
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