Two Hours in Tromsø, Norway

Zagan the motorhome is being a tad cheeky, parked in the Elverhoy Church car park, above the town of Tromsø (N69.64865, E18.92327). However the car park is more like a patch of gravel, and the church is closed, so we think we’ll be OK here for the night.

Elverhoy Church with Zagan in the trees

Last night we slept like logs, the last ferry pushed off from the jetty next to us around 10pm, plunging the area into silence – apart from Charlie snores. Jay woke me up when Charlie was at the door telling us he wanted out, it was my turn. Poorly pooch has been feeling off since he ate or drank something skanky on the beach the other day, so yesterday he was on a no food day. Expecting to be needing several poop bags for his runny tum, I stumbled out of the van with him into the grey rainy daylight, only to find I didn’t need any. He wanted a wee and another attempt to score some bits of rotting fish that were on the quayside – that pooch will never learn.

Poorly pooch

Climbing back into bed I spotted the time: 6.45am. That was the time my alarm would go off in my old life. Today being a rainy Monday morning made it all the more blissful to climb back into bed and drift off back to sleep, for fifteen minutes. The 7am ferry rumbled in, crashed and boomed its way to the jetty and very soon cars were rolling off to their days work. The same thing happened pretty much every hour, until 11am when a lorry in the first lane for the ferry didn’t move when it was time to get on board. Sheepishly the drivers in lane two crept forward, not wanting to queue jump, but not wanting to hold up the ferry either. The ferry blasted its horn, rattling the mountains around us and sending a swarm of birds into the sky from the nearby beach, and waking up the lorry driver who quickly fired up his engine and joined the back of the queue.

It’s heading straight for us!!

We set off for Tromsø with a plan to find somewhere to stop en route while Charlie sorts himself out. Best laid plans and all that, we found ourselves in the outskirts of the city and in the queue for the bridge to cross over onto island of Tromsøya, where the town centre is. There is a massive underground car park dug into the hill that the city sits on, with several tunnel entrances, however motorhomes aren’t allowed in it, so we parked up just north of the bridge. A Norwegian motorhome pulling into the busy car park just after us explained the ticket machine (N69.65456, E18.96651). At 25kr per hour we were going to try our luck elsewhere, but then figured everywhere would be around the same price, so we coughed up 50kr – about a fiver – to give ourselves a couple of hours to explore the town (we later discovered it was only 20kr an hour by Polaria and free everywhere on Sundays, just in case you are planning to visit).

Tromso

The Arctic Cathedral

Tromso is know as the ‘Gateway to the Arctic’. It was near here they found parts from Roald Amundsen’s rescue mission plane which disappeared with him and his crew in 1928.

We worked our way along the waterfront which was busy with tourists. The sun had come out and bars and restaurants along the water were doing a roaring trade serving up amazingly expensive beers and food. Norwegian supermarkets are quite expensive, but eating out takes things to a whole new level (Nachos 185kr, Club Sandwich 175kr, Burger 210kr, Fish and Chips 188kr – to get a rough idea of UK prices, divide by 10). We’d originally talked about having a meal out in Tromsø, but now we were on the clock for the parking meter, that idea went and we scoffed a chocolate bar each as we walked around – praying that Charlie would be able to hold in the little bit of breakfast we’d given him as was passed the busy restaurants.

I love all these wooden buildings

£14 for a real wool waterproof jacket in a Sami style – seems very reasonable, oh no hang on, £140 – better pop that back.

Following the map in our Lonely Planet guidebook, we got to take in most of the sights, watch the Hurtigruten Ferry dock (which we’ve added to our bucket list for when we’re older!) and grab some groceries in our two hours. In my supermarket sweep, I also grabbed a beer brewed in here in Tromsø at the world’s northernmost brewery, the Mack Brewery (they don’t count the microbrewery upstart near Nordkapp as a full brewery!).

The tap house for the Mack Brewery – which is it attached to.

Polaria with its falling down white squares building and ship in glass

Charlie feeling brighter

So now we know what the back of a police car in Norway looks like, best avoided!

Tromsø was a great mixture of old wooden houses, a lively port area and some great looking museums. Sadly with a poorly pooch we didn’t dare to leave him in the van while we ventured into any of the museums. We’ll just have to save those, and our meal out, for next time we visit on the Hurtigruten.

Tromso Domkirke – one of Norway’s largest wooden churches

The Hurtigruten docked in front of the Arctic Cathedral

Ju x

Bonus pics –

All towns should be made to make their drain covers more interesting..

..like these.

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