Polar night and polar bear island - a Norwegian winter adventure

[Justinf]

Doing this would quickly ruin me so I decided to leave and head to another bar, but the price wasn’t a heck of a lot cheaper.
This one was $23.42 so I decided to head back to the room and watch some TV and luckily I had bought a nice Chilean wine at the liquor store (it is closed on Sundays) so that was my Saturday night. The liquor store prices are very reasonable thank goodness. I bought a toasted sandwich from 7/11 for dinner, which was incredibly average.

 

[RooFlyer]

I had bought a nice Chilean wine at the liquor store (it is closed on Sundays) so that was my Saturday night.

I think the booze shops close at noon on Saturdays too don’t they? I recall I was invited to dinner at someone’s place on a Saturday night and was caught short when I couldn’t buy any wine to take with me that afternoon. A few years ago now, though.

 

[Justinf]

I think the booze shops close at noon on Saturdays too don’t they? I recall I was invited to dinner at someone’s place on a Saturday night and was caught short when I couldn’t buy any wine to take with me that afternoon. A few years ago now, though.

6pm. I got there at 4.30pm.

 

[Justinf]

Woke up at 4am and didn’t get back to sleep until close to 7am. Damn.
Woke up again at 9am and there wasn’t any chance of doing any sort of city walking tour. I looked up one that left at 10am and it was close to $300 for an ‘express’ one-hour walking tour. Ummmmm, yeah……..no thanks.
It was meant to snow this afternoon so I decided to walk across the bridge to the Arctic cathedral. It was Sunday after all, so a good day to visit a church.
I walked along the waterfront first.
It was much milder today presumably because of the moisture in the air with the impending snow. About -2.

 

[Justinf]

When I got to the bridge, I decided to put on my crampons for the first ever time.
I bought these on Amazon for about $25 and they worked remarkably well. I noticed while walking back from the bridge back into town that others were slipping, but I was quite confident in walking reasonably quickly with no mishaps.

 

[Justinf]

I knew the walk over the bridge would be much colder than anywhere else with the wind coming off the water.
And it was.
I think it’s about 1.5km from start to finish. Not much opportunity to take pics as there are safety barriers for obvious reasons and trying to take photos through the barriers was problematic.
I did manage one though.

 

[Justinf]

The bridge itself had barely any snow or ice on it, but my crampons still worked well.

 

[Justinf]

Upon reaching the other side the cathedral was still there and it looked lovely as did its surrounds.
It was about $30 to get in so I bypassed that and caught my breath to prepare for the trek back.

 

[Justinf]

Back across the bridge it started to snow, but just some light flurries at first.
I toyed with the idea of visiting the Polar Museum, but museums aren’t really my thing and I was starting to get hungry after all that walking.
I headed back into town via the back streets.

 

[Justinf]

The snow had picked up and I decided to call it quits but not before a stop at 7/11 to get this.

The snow ploughs were working overtime by now.

 

[Justinf]

I chilled in my shoebox of a room for an hour and then decided to head to the Hjemmebane pub which is about 100 metres from my shoebox.
It’s a kinda American themed sports bar, although there is nothing American about it, but it was showing the Tottenham vs Manchester City game, which started at a magnificently convenient time of 5.30pm Norwegian time. Bonus.



After a disgusting first half where we trailed 0-2, we hit back and eventually drew 2-2. There was a handball final on between Denmark and Germany that seemed pretty damn cool and the Danes won. Most people were watching that.

 

[Justinf]

Three 500ml beers set me back around $65 so after the game I headed back to the hotel and it was really snowing now.

 

[Justinf]

I have an 11am flight to Bergen tomorrow so I plan to catch the 9.09am airport bus.
Grabbed some pepperoni pizza from 7/11 for dinner, which - again - was ordinary, but when you spend all your money on three beers, beggars can’t be choosers.
Just a word about Comfort Hotel Xpress here in Tromso if you are looking for cost-effective accommodation.
The location is amazing and of course the price is good.
The staff are pleasant and the room was clean and functional.
However, and this is a big no-no from me, and I should have been aware of it when looking, but there is a room clean only on the fourth day of a stay.
I stayed for three nights and didn’t realise this was the policy and I feel it wasn’t made very clear when I booked.
I’m happy to re-use towels, in fact I’d prefer it. But because the room was so small, I ate a few things in bed and the sheets were a bit filthy, however, that’s on me I guess.
There was also no fridge so I had to buy stuff that I would consume relatively quickly.
There was also no tea or coffee making facilities, but there is free coffee at reception if you sign up as a member, which is free, and you can walk into any Comfort Xpress hotel anywhere and have a takeaway coffee if you wish. The only pain was having to get dressed just to go to the foyer to get a coffee and I almost always have two, so I had to do it twice.
Would I stay here again?
No.
I’ve stayed in some cheap two- and three-star hotels in my time and normally don’t mind them at all. Japan springs to mind.
But this was a little too bare bones even for me and I am not fussy at all when it comes to lodging.