Our flight to Norway coincided with a pretty bad snow storm, we couldn't see the runway until a few seconds before we touched down, but that didn't stop the pilots. Here's a look at what the runway and streets looked like when we landed.
I didn't know quite what to expect of Tromsø, but it was a really cool city. Downtown was mostly all foot traffic, I'm not sure if this is the case year round, or if it was just because of the storm. One thing I found amusing was that the locals would wear snow pants to walk around town and even into McDonalds, I'm not sure why that stuck with me, I guess because I've never seen anyone all geared up in a McDonalds before. Some background info on Tromsø, it's located on an island (connected by bridges to the mainland of Norway), and it's the largest city in the Arctic Circle. At some points of the year it experiences approximately 6 weeks straight with no sun, or no night depending on the time of year. We were there in March, so the schedule wasn't too far off from normal, it got dark slightly earlier than usual. We found this neat little video game theme burger bar, and took across one of the bridges to this really unique looking church which makes for some incredible photos.
Our first night, we went on a Northern Lights tour. It's always a risk that the aurora may not be visible some nights, and for the first hour or two, things weren't looking great. But then our guide got word from one of the other mini-buses that they had spotted the aurora near the border of Finland. We drove just over the border into Finland and pulled over. The northern lights were beautiful, and they moved around quicker than I expected. We got some pictures with it, then we got suited up into some warm suits, and had a campfire. I would definitely love to do this again some day.
The following day was an early morning with not much sleep, we met up with another tour company in town and caught a bus out to their location maybe an hour outside of the city. We got geared up and went on a snowmobile tour, which was my first time driving a snowmobile ever. I'm not really sure how I can top this first experience as the views of the snowy mountains out there were beautiful.
When we flew out of Tromsø, the weather was the exact opposite of that of our arrival, and I'm so glad it was. The views from the plane were incredible, mountains and fjords as far as the eye could see.
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