Yesterday we were both rather exhausted from our cross-country skiing the day before, however the return of the skis required us to be up early enough to drive into Tromso. Being awake and in town we decided that we should start investigating some of the things to see. We started with the Tromso museum and its intriguing exhibits on the flora and fauna of Tromso, Viking history and Sami country. The temporary exhibit showcasing photographs from around the world from the finalists of the wildlife photography awards. Actually one of the highlights of this exhibit was a collection by a local photographer who did all sorts of things like holding flashguns underwater when photographing fish and positioning a camera with a lure to capture an eagle swooping on prey.

One of the irritating things about Tromso is the parking charges everywhere in the city centre, which are not only steep, but often are fitted with magnetic strip readers which seem not to like my card. This led to us driving around the outskirts of the city centre for a long time looking for somewhere to park and walk in. Eventually after giving up the idea we found a working machine not too far from the Polar museum and enjoyed the last hour of their opening – we will be able to go back there and intend to return to complete our sightseeing on another day.

Friday (today)

Last night we decided to drive to Sommarøy as it was recommended as a very scenic location on the map of the area that we picked up. We also read about a nice hike we could do there. When we woke up in the morning it was very windy and raining heavily and neither of us felt like hiking in such weather. Instead we took some photos, as the location was indeed beautiful and then continued to drive along the recommended route, stopping to take more photos. We also came across some rock carvings dating about 4000 years.  

Since we needed to upload the previous days’ posts to this blog having not had good internet access in a while we then decided to try and find some sort of café. Happily we chanced upon a supermarket with a small café/diner attached which had both wifi and sockets to charge the laptop. The best part of this stop however is that for the first time we found Norwegian food which could reasonably be described as affordable! For around 100 NOK (£10 or so) we had two tasty plates of food. Bacalao – a Mediterranean style dish which is made with Norwegian dried cod (the primary destination of Norwegian cod is Italy, Spain and Portugal) and Karbonade (a burger type thing with caramelised onions and potatoes in a creamy sauce which was advertised on the tables) were the dishes we chose. You can find this place called Eide Handel about 20 minutes drive from Tromso at the junction of the roads 862 and 858.