It has already been a while ago since I had been up in Tromsø, by now over 1.5 years ago when I visited my cousin Florian in July 2009. Audrey, however, had never been up yet and asked me if I was interested in a trip. I agreed as I had never been to Tromsø in winter.
The weekend we chose for our little tour was the last weekend of January for which we found relatively well priced flight tickets with SAS.
Of course I contacted my cousin Flo which I was looking forward to meeting again. He also offered to stay at his place. Very kind of him. Together with Audrey though, we preferred to book a hotel; I usually get good (agent) rates in hotels.
Friday 28/01:
We started our trip on Friday after work. We took the express train Flytoget to Oslo Airport Gardermoen and headed northwards. Upon arrival Flo picked us up from the airport in Tromsø. He dropped us at the Clarion Hotel Bryggen, where we quickly checked in and then left for a drink in town. The place we initially wanted to go was closed due to a private party, so we changed location. While already enjoying our first drink we were joined by a German friend of Flo’s (I can't remember his hame). He was about the same age as Flo and also lived with his wife and kids up in the North. After a pleasant evening with a couple of drinks and good conversations, we invited him to join us the next day on our excursion to the outskirts of Tromsø. Unfortunately, Flo’s friend couldn’t join, but invited us instead to his place the text day in the afternoon. It would be a pleasure for him if we could come and so we agreed. But first of all we enjoyed a good night sleep at the hotel.
Saturday 29/01:
We had an appointment with Flo at 10 a.m. in front of our hotel, but he excused himself and made it only at around 11. Audrey and I used the time waiting for taking some pictures of the hotel's surroundings...
...with view of the opposite mountain with the Fjellheisen funicular...
...and the Ishavskatedralen.
When Flo eventually came to pick us up, we started our little excursion northwards out of Tromsø along beautiful landscape...
... and down into the little bay of Bellvika with spectacular snow covered mountains flanking the fjord (is this part by definition a fjord - I don't know).
We had parked our car in that village (or rather agglomeration of a hand full of houses) and walked along the shore through the deep and fresh snow.
After about 2 hours we made us on the way back where we happen to see a couple of reindeer.
As mentioned, we were invited by Flo's friend to come over to his place. So after our little walk out at the Kvaløya shore, we quickly dropped into a supermarked to buy the ingredients for making a quick cake; we didn't wanna arrive at the friend's place with empty hands.
The afternoon was actually very nice. Apart from that very well-educated and cute dog, we had some good and interesting conversations. It was so nice and the people were so welcoming though we didn't know them at all and they didn't know us.
After a lot of cake, sweets, coffee and hot chocolate at their place, we continued eating at Helder's place.
Helder is Jana's boyfriend, is Portuguese and lives in Tromsø. Jana happened to be up in Tromsø visiting Helder exactly this weekend and so they invited us, that is Audrey, my cousin and me together with some other friend's of Helder for dinner.
Jana served some home-made bread and Helder created a delicious dish of rice, vegetables and salmon.
The evening was rounded off with some drinks (among others some Portuguese specialties) and a lot of talks.
Sunday 30/01:
The day started rather unspectacularly. Audrey and I went for a stroll through town and used the occasion to inspect here and there a hotel that we use for our tourists coming to Tromsø.
At 12:30 p.m. we met again Jana and Helder. We took the Fjellheisen funicular which brought us on the mountain top...
...which offered a fantastic view over the town of Tromsø and the surroundings. You might remember me taking this cablecar up there during my previous visit to Tromsø, but it is a totally different thing to visit this place in winter season when everything is covered in snow.
Before taking the funicular back down into the valley, we decided to drop into the little cafeteria to warm up when having a cup of hot chocolate sitting next to a fire place.
Back in town we visited the Polarmuseum. Unfortunately the museum was closing soon so we rather rushed through the expositions which would have been well worth a more detailed look at.
After this visit, Jana and Helder left. Audrey and I continued with our hotel inspections. I carefully chose the order of visiting the remaining two hotels. We first to have a look at our neighbour hotel, the Clarion Collection Hotel With. The Clarion Collection hotels always offer free waffles in the afternoon. So after a walk through different types of rooms I asked the receptionist if we could just quickly take a sip of water with the excuse of having been out the whole day now. "Of course you can. And if you want also help yourselves with the waffles!". Perfect, that was exactly the answer I was waiting for :-)
Audrey was so fascinated by this that she couldn't resist from preparing herself a second waffle :-)
With some waffles, a drink and some fruit in our stomach, we made our way back to our hotel, had a quick look at the various rooms, pick-up our luggage and left to the airport.
This was a reaaaally good weekend and I was glad having seen Florian again.
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