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Our second day in Alta had us touring the “City of Northern Lights”. Our first stop was at the Alta Museum. It is part of a UNESCO World Heritage site. There are many forms of rock art in the area and the museum is built along side a huge field of the rocks. Unfortunately because of the time of year they are under about 3 feet of snow. However in the museum they have several examples of the rock art. The ones outside are huge, 15 to 20 feet of art. The oldest specimens are about 7,000 years old. The ones in Alta are about 3,000 years old. When we first arrived at the museum there were a group of pre-schoolers out for their daily hour plus of play time, weather not an issue. They were climbing on the snow banks and eating the snow. This morning the temperature was about 5 F.

The museum had some small pieces of the rock art to include one called Pippi which was a realistic figure of a girl. There was also an exhibition of Sami clothing and one about one of their national ski jumpers from the 1960s. In the basement was a theater that had a show of the aurora.

The city of Alta has a population of about 21,000 and is the 6th most populated place in Norway. The town center is tiny. They offered a shopping shuttle but we did not go.

Our second stop was the Northern Lights Cathedral. It is an unusual structure, sort of looks like a cinnamon roll. The original church for the town was destroyed during WWII. The first service after the war was held on December 25, 1945 and the 100 people who attended decided they would build a new church, and the donations began then. The cornerstone was laid in 2000 with construction started in 2011 and consecration in 2013. It is made of poured concrete with over 40,000 pieces of titanium for the outside panels covering the building. The flooring is Alta slate in the entry with oak floors in the actual church. Because this is such a small community the building is used by many religions and is also the town concert hall, teen center, meeting hall and gatherings place for many clubs. The statue of Christ is quite different. It is bronze weighing 2 tons, he is standing in a boat and is looking up to convey hope.

Again, the internet is not strong enough to add photos to this post. Hopefully we get somewhere in the near future and I will be able to send photos too.

The sail into the town of Alta was beautiful. We passed snow covered mountain after snow covered mountain. The sky was clear and the sun was shining. A beautiful morning. We had no tours today until the evening. We exercised, read our books and played bridge online.

Our tour started at 9:30 PM. It was around -12 C when we started. It eventually got to -17 C, a balmy 3 F! The landscape is pretty, lots of snow covered low mountains. The snow looks like whipped cream. It is pure white. We got to Paeskatun after a 1/2 hour ride. We were greeted and told the lay out. There were several small houses – 2 were for warm drinks and cake, a museum, a shop, a Sami tepee and an ice house. But the real reason we were there was to try to see the Northern lights. When we first arrived there were some small wisps of the lights, but they quickly disappeared. We walked around some and then went inside to warm up.

Then, the lights appeared. The sky was full. Long trails of lights, curtains. It was amazing. Once again, Bob got some great photos. For some reason my photo skills were lost. It was an amazing night.

I am still unable to post photos to my blog. Hopefully when we get to places that are not so remote I will be able to add photos.

After Bergen we had a sea day. There were lots of lectures to attend. The ship’s historian did a tour of the art work on all the landings. These are enlarged photos of the Bayeau Tapestry and he explained the story that they told.

We had another shot at seeing the Northern Lights while we sailed, but it did not happen this evening.

In the morning we were in Narvik. This is a town of about 14,500 inhabitants. It was founded around 1900 because of commerce. There is huge iron mining in Sweden at Kiruna, which is about 150 kilometers from Narvik. Since Narvik is a port whose waters never freeze due to the Gulf Stream, the Swedes use this port to send their ore to most of Europe and also to Asia. They move about 25 million tons of iron ore yearly.

The polar night lasts from December 6 to January 9 – this means the sun does not rise above the horizon for that time. It does get twilight for those days. The days of the midnight sun – no darkness – last from May 25 to July 20. I think you have to be a hardy person to go through these extremes.

The highlight of our day was our excursion to go dog sledding. We had to drive away from the coast for almost 2 hours. The scenery along the way was beautiful. Snow covered mountains, frozen lakes and rivers and amazing vistas wherever we looked. The dogs are Siberian huskies. They are smaller and colored differently from the Alaskan huskies which we normally see. The ride was fun. After we got to see the 4 month old babies who were friendly. Soup and hot chocolate was served and then we traveled back to the ship.

Dinner was at the Chef’s Table restaurant on board. It was a 5 course Scandinavian menu with wine served for each course.

We did get another viewing of the lights this night. Very cold on deck, but Bob again got great photos. Bette is still zero in photography.

Again, wifi not strong enough to share photos. Will try at a later time.

Friday morning we were still in Bergen. We had a Panoramic Tour provided by the ship. Bergen is the second largest city in Norway with less than 300,000 people. It is a popular tourist destination in the summer and is becoming one in the winter as well. The main source of income comes from the shipping and fishing industries.

We saw statues of Ibsen and Grieg who led the local arts scene. We saw the national theater where they worked together.

We stopped for a short tour of the Bryggen.

Then it was back to the ship for lunch and sailing off to our next port of Narvik. The seas were a little rough for the first few hours of this leg and we stumbled about as we walked to dinner and then around the ship after.

Since we still had not slept well we were in our cabin getting ready for bed around 10. At 10:15 they announced that there had been a sighting of the Northern Lights. We quickly dressed in our warm clothes and made our way up to the top deck. There we saw a shimmer of the lights on the horizon and then a little later shimmers in the sky. Bob was able to get some photos. I was just thrilled to be seeing them.

Mission accomplished.

(Due to spotty internet where we are photos are not uploading. Will try again to add photos when internet improves.)

We arrived in Bergen on the afternoon of February 16, after having flown from Boston to Bergen through Amsterdam. Our car and driver were waiting at the exit from baggage claim. We were surprised that we did not have to go through any customs/arrival security. Had we arrived just 3 days earlier we would have had to have special paperwork for Norway and take a Covid test at the airport. Norway had suspended all Covid protocol as of the 12th. There are no mask requirements in Norway, but we wore ours as a precaution.

We stayed at the Radisson Blu on the famous Bryggen. After checking in we walked a little, but went back to the hotel when it started to rain. Dinner was in the hotel restaurant, 26 North. The food and service were excellent. Our room had a very slanted ceiling, so we had to put our suitcases there to remind us to duck.

After breakfast we walked to an ATM to get some Norwegian krona. Everyone here has told us we do not need to tip, but we wanted to have some cash for our tour guides. On the ship we will tip on our account. A taxi ride got us to the cruise terminal. We had to answer health information again and have a temperature test. Then we had to do a Covid test. It took quite a while to gather enough spit to fill our vials to the number 2. Then after passport control we signed in, and were allowed onto the ship. We went to our muster station where we got our safety briefing and then we were escorted to our stateroom. We are confined here until our Covid test comes back negative. There was a second briefing on our TV and lunch waiting for us.

We have tried unsuccessfully to sign into the ship’s WiFi. Can’t get help because we are still hostages in our room. Our bags have arrived, but we will wait to unpack until we get the green light from Viking. We are sure we are OK, but I would hate to unpack and then have to repack because we are being asked to leave.

So far the weather today has been: 9:30 walk to ATM, cold and clear, 10:45 taxi to ship snow shower, noon sunny and now at 1:30 snowing hard.

It took until 4:45 PM for us to get the OK for the Covid test we took when we boarded the ship. So now we are free. Ready to leave the room, tour the ship some and get ready for dinner. Will be an early night tonight, since we are still not on this time zone.

Welcome to Norway!

After almost 2.5 years we are venturing out on our first international trip.

There have been so many ups and downs involving this trip. Almost daily for the last 3 weeks we have gotten updates from our cruise company with information on what we need to do to travel and get on our ship. One day we need a special European digital vaccination passport and then the next we don’t. We thought we needed special paperwork to get into Norway, but yesterday when we went to fill it out online, there was a notice that as of February 12, this paperwork was no longer necessary.

This morning we got our Covid PCR test and just got back from getting the results – both of us are negative so now for certain this trip is a go.

Our ship is Viking Venus and the cruise is called In Search of the Northern Lights. Hopefully we will see them in our 12 days in Norway.

Looking forward to keeping you informed about this first adventure.

Today was another amazing day, except for the weather. There were high alerts for wind and there were 80% chances for rain. We got to sleep in a little later today since our tour did not start until 11.

The days are very short here. Sun rising around 9:15 and setting around 4:15. We had to drive from our hotel to the town of Vik, around an hour away.

We toured with David (Icelandic name too hard to say) and we were going to ice caves. We drove for about 30 minutes out to the glacier. We were off road in one of the Super Jeeps but not as fancy as the one from the day before. We put on helmets and crampons and then walked about 15 minutes to get to the mouth of the cave. We had to walk through slush, over streamlets on wooden planks and then climb on ice. There were ropes to help. The ice was amazing, with the blues of glacial ice but with lots of black lava sand too.

The walking and climbing was tricky, so the guide took Bette back to the car so the others could explore a second, more difficult cave. While Bette waited in the car the wind rose and the rain poured down.

On the way back we were treated to a roller coaster like ride over the dunes that were covered in snow. David played Highway to Hell!

We finished the tour with a ride along the black sand beach to see some rock formations in the water.

After a quick bite for lunch we were off on our own to another black sand beach with basalt columns and caves. The surf was so strong we could not get close to see much.

Our final stop for the day which was just at sunset was Skogarfoss, a huge waterfall.

We had our last dinner and went to bed hopeful.

Final tally- no Northern Lights for us.

We woke around 7:15 to our alarms ringing. We were disappointed that we had not gotten a middle of the night wake up call, but were glad to have had a good nights rest.

After breakfast we bundled ourselves up and were picked up by our guide/driver Heimir. We had a full day adventure ahead. We were in a Super Jeep and we were going off road to see the stark beauty of the southern part of Iceland. Unfortunately it was rainy and windy again, but we did get to see some amazing things. As we drive our guide told us stories and pointed out different vistas. We were near the Eyjafjallajokull volcano that caused all the travel problems in 2010. We had a great lunch at a restaurant/hotel/camping area in the National Park where we were traveling, Thormark. We did some hiking, once to a crater from after the volcano exploded, and to a cave up on the side of a hill.

We ended our day with dune buggy rides crossing streams and rivers and even having hot chocolate and donuts at a waterfall

Day two – no Northern lights.

Bob and I flew from Fort Myers to Boston with no problems. We met up with Jennifer and family at the airport to fly on to Reykjavik. We had a short 4.5 hour flight with little sleep and landed in Reykjavik around 5:30 AM.

After clearing customs, getting our luggage and having a bite to eat we went out to our rental car. It is a 7 passenger SUV but with 6 people and luggage it is a tight fit. To add to the adventure our car was the last one in the Hertz lot, it was raining gallons and the winds were 25+mph. We had to hold on to the doors so they did not slam on anyone or blow off. Bob’s favorite hat blew away and since it was black and the sun was not anywhere to be seen and the rain was wicked we had our first mishap.

Not to be deterred we left the airport around 7:30 and headed for the Blue Lagoon. Because of the weather Bette bailed and Bob had said no even before we got there. Jen and crew persevered and went in. I kid you not, there were white caps in the water. The rain was still falling and the wind was still blowing. The sun had not yet risen.

We arrived in Reykjavik!

We took the coastal road skirting Reykjavik totally. The drive was pretty. At first it was rainy, the it cleared, then we went through an area totally covered in snow and then we were back in the rain. We stopped in an area that had around 5 different waterfalls. The kids and Bob walked into a canyon type area and saw the waterfall up close.

We then went to our hotel, Hotel Ranga. There is a hot tub outside our rooms, so the Srivastava’s used it, despite the rain and wind.

We had a lovely dinner in the hotel restaurant and then it was off to rest. We turned in around 9 – it had been a very long day.

We pushed the Aurora Wake Me Up button on our phones and went to bed. If the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) appear the hotel will ring your room if you have pushed the magic button.

Night One – no northern lights.