Day 2 - 4
(21 – 23 Sep 2014)
We’re heading to Tromsø, a
city that’s 350m north of Arctic Circle. So exciting!! We’re going to try our
luck to catch the Green Lady – the aurora borealis! We only have 3 nights, 3
precious nights. It is said that it’s best to stay at least a week here, then you’ll
be almost certain to see the northern light. I can’t afford a week’s stay
here..
I’ve done some reading about the aurora borealis. Peak season for people to go and see the northern light is during winter (Oct – Mar). But it doesn’t mean the NL (northern light) is not there outside this period. Winter is favourable because of the long nights. But during winter a lot of places are closed and some transports are not operating. After I read up a lot of info on the internet, I learned that the NL can be seen as early as Sep. And during the autumn equinox (northern hemisphere), there’s higher chances of catching the NL. Perfect! It’s not too cold, and most places of interests still open in Sep. And I’ll get to experience autumn colour for the first time~ Hence I planned my trip to be in Tromsø around 23 Sep – 2014’s autumn equinox.
Why is there a higher chances of seeing the NL during equinox? Quote from a website : “During the equinoxes the Earth’s magnetic axis more suitably aligns with that of the Sun’s and larger deviations into negative Bz are more likely, therefore facilitating Solar Wind particle transfer into our atmosphere. Suffice to say, activity does tend to be higher around these months.” (these months = meaning Sep and Mar).
I’ve done some reading about the aurora borealis. Peak season for people to go and see the northern light is during winter (Oct – Mar). But it doesn’t mean the NL (northern light) is not there outside this period. Winter is favourable because of the long nights. But during winter a lot of places are closed and some transports are not operating. After I read up a lot of info on the internet, I learned that the NL can be seen as early as Sep. And during the autumn equinox (northern hemisphere), there’s higher chances of catching the NL. Perfect! It’s not too cold, and most places of interests still open in Sep. And I’ll get to experience autumn colour for the first time~ Hence I planned my trip to be in Tromsø around 23 Sep – 2014’s autumn equinox.
Why is there a higher chances of seeing the NL during equinox? Quote from a website : “During the equinoxes the Earth’s magnetic axis more suitably aligns with that of the Sun’s and larger deviations into negative Bz are more likely, therefore facilitating Solar Wind particle transfer into our atmosphere. Suffice to say, activity does tend to be higher around these months.” (these months = meaning Sep and Mar).
So, from Oslo, we flew to Tromsø by Norwegian Airline. The airfare was about
Euro 100 (SGD170). It’s a 2-hour flight.
This is how Tromsø looks like,
outside the airport. To go to the local bus station, go to the basement, pass
through the carpark to cross to the other side.
We saw very few
Asians throughout our trip in Norway. At the airport while waiting to board the
flight to Tromsø we saw 5 or 6 Chinese and my friend guessed from
their accent that they are probably Malaysians. True enough, they are. When we’re
at the bus station outside the airport,
one of them came over and asked where we’re from, they too have correctly
guessed we’re from Malaysia. One or two of them seemed to be very familiar with
Tromsø, asking us where are we staying and told us what bus we should take. I was busy
getting the bus ticket with my mobile phone… . I left the ‘chit-chatting’ duty to my friend… the
bus was coming soon – remember I said it’s a lot more expensive to purchase bus
ticket onboard, than to buy it beforehand. Also if we miss one bus we’ll have
to wait for another half an hour or so. The group was heading to town, we were
not, our hotel is outside of town. So we headed our separate ways.
I bought the ticket
using Tromskortet apps. Website : http://www.tromskortet.no/
A 24-hour ticket cost
NOK70. If you use the apps to buy, there’ll be a countdown timer, when you take
the bus, just show it to the bus driver. So you have to have internet access on your mobile phone.
By the way, we bought a sim card at Oslo airport for 199NOK,
about SGD40. It only comes with 200mb of data. I used that up in 2 days. It’s
so convenient to be able to online while on the go, I depend on google map a
lot. To top up, it’s another 199NOK, AND still 200mb! That’s really hefty! On
the second day I received a message in Norwegian that I’ve used up my data. But
I could still online.. And it wasn’t any slower at all. So I didn’t buy a top
up and continue to online. I recalled that I didn’t provide a credit card when
purchasing the sim card, so I can be sure I will not be charged anything..
I continued to online for free throughout my trip.. :p
So, we stayed at Sydspissen Hotel, by bus, it’s about 15min
from town. It’s about S$180 (880NOK) per night, breakfast included. All the
hotels we stayed in Norway includes wifi – I was so very pleased. LOL.
It was zero to 2 deg Celsius during day time. So cold~
Tromsø is not very big. To see the NL, you can sign
up with a NL hunt tour or you can take the public transport to some places away
from the city light to try your luck. There are 2 places you can try on your
own. One is Telegrafbukta beach on the southern tip of Tromsø or the Lake
Presvannet in the centre of Tromsø. We intended to take one tour only during
our 3 nights stay. And then stay at a hotel far from the light pollution of
town so that we can try our luck to catch NL at the hotel itself. That's why we chose to
stay at Sydspissen Hotel, at the southern tip, which is right at the
Telegrafbukta beach.
Our first night at the hotel. There’s a café with free flow
hot water, coffee and tea. But it closes at 11pm. There are a few tables
outside, we stayed out there to try our luck to catch the NL.
At 11pm the café closed, we could still sit at the tables
outside but we no longer have access to the hot water. It was really really
cold. We “persevered” and stayed till nearly 1am I think. There was nothing but
very bright cloud. It was so cloudy and drizzled a bit. And here we only get to
see a small part of the sky, we decided it’s not ideal to try our luck with the
green lady this way.
No northern light…
It snowed earlier when we got back to our room to rest a bit, before we went out to the café to wait for NL. We re-donned our outfit but by
the time we got out, it stopped snowing.. so disappointed. This is the second
time I watched it snow and was indoor… The first time I was in a train in Austria.
This was the beach behind the hotel. It was cold alright~ but
we took off our cold wear nevertheless, just to take photos, cos we look so fat
in those cold wear. LOL…
It’s actually better, if we’re daring enough to walk here at
night, and wait for the NL to show up, as compare to sitting at the café. There’ll
be a broader view of the sky. But it was really dark... Everywhere in Norway
(except city) is so quiet and of course this beach is no different. We walked towards the beach a bit the night before and decided it’s best to head back to the café… I was
worried there might be some animals suddenly jump out and cause me to have a
heart attack. LOL... Also, it’s really really cold. And it’s autumn, it’s
not even winter yet. So I still think, going with a tour is better than to wait
for the NL by yourself like this.
After taking a lot of photos, we headed to town. We first
stopped at the Polaria Museum. Entrance fee NOK120. There’s a short video show
of the northern light. The staff was very friendly and told us the video was
going to start in about 10min. Otherwise we’d probably miss it, I’m not
particularly interested to check for shows when I visit places.. The NL video
was informative. So in simple term, the
NL happens, because the sun shoots out solar flare, sometimes it comes directly
towards earth. When it (charged particles) reaches Earth, they collide with
gaseous particles in the Earth’s atmosphere. This collision causes the northern
light. The different colours of NL is caused by different gas. The most common
colour – pale yellowish-green is produced by oxygen molecules located about
60miles above the Earth. Rare, all-red auroras are produced by high-altitude
oxygen, at heights of up to 200 miles. Nitrogen produces blue or purplish-red
aurora. (source : http://www.northernlightscentre.ca/northernlights.html)
The Polaria Museum
A weird looking fish in the museum.
Our lunch. It’s always pizza and hot dogs and spaghettis. But
I did not see aglio-olio in any restaurant that we went.. it’s all creamy
ones.. I can survive eating aglio-olio
every single day, but not the creamy spaghettis…..
I think it was this restaurant (pic above) that we went back for a second time. The cute waiter ;) recognized us from the day before. We ordered food and paid at the counter. And I saw from the menu that the coffee includes one refill, and I asked him about that to confirm. He answered "Just take it" and smiled~ I thought he meant, just refill as many times as you want. After I paid and I saw that he didn't charge us coffee at all~! The two coffee would cost us S$12. We saved S$12~! So happy, and have I said it already, he was really cute, lol. And he has a nice smile ;) That was a really memorable encounter. haha...
The Arctic Cathedral, probably the world’s northern most Protestant cathedral. We just took pictures from outside, public is not allowed in except when there’s a mass or concert.
The Arctic Cathedral, probably the world’s northern most Protestant cathedral. We just took pictures from outside, public is not allowed in except when there’s a mass or concert.
I wanted to book a NL tour before I travelled to Norway. But
the reviews on Trip Advisor are so mixed – each tour company has very good and very bad ones… I
decided to just anyhow pick one when we are at Tromsø. We got a brochure of
Arctic Guide Service from the hotel, and the shop is easy to find. So Arctic
Guide Service (http://www.arcticguideservice.com/)
it is. It cost 950NOK (abt S$200) per person. Now I come to think about it, this is not as
expensive as taking hot air balloons in Australia and also the whale watching tour..
Depends on which season, you go out at night (6+pm or 8pm) and come back after midnight. In Sep,the sky is still bright at 6, 7pm. So we started our tour from 8pm. This night there was about 10 people on the big coach. Our guide was Ricardo, he’s from Spain. He was quite nice. He explained about the NL and how to take photos of NL. We were told that if there’s clear sky at one location, there’s no need to go anywhere else, we’ll just wait. Because if there’s NL activity, everywhere can see it, key thing is there’s no cloud blocking our view. This night, it’s cloudy… everywhere we went. We went from places to places, Ricardo contacted his friends to check where we could possibly find a clear sky. We tried till 2am…to no avail. I was so disappointed. That was the night of 22 Sep.
Depends on which season, you go out at night (6+pm or 8pm) and come back after midnight. In Sep,the sky is still bright at 6, 7pm. So we started our tour from 8pm. This night there was about 10 people on the big coach. Our guide was Ricardo, he’s from Spain. He was quite nice. He explained about the NL and how to take photos of NL. We were told that if there’s clear sky at one location, there’s no need to go anywhere else, we’ll just wait. Because if there’s NL activity, everywhere can see it, key thing is there’s no cloud blocking our view. This night, it’s cloudy… everywhere we went. We went from places to places, Ricardo contacted his friends to check where we could possibly find a clear sky. We tried till 2am…to no avail. I was so disappointed. That was the night of 22 Sep.
Back at the hotel, we
decided we should try once more tomorrow. Arctic Guide Service gives a
discount when you go back to them for another tour. So it’s, I think 800NOK (or
was it 750NOK.. I forgot) the second time. On 23rd it’ll be our last
night in Tromsø, our flight to the next city-Stavanger, would be at 8am on
24th . It meant we would have only about 2 hours of sleep (after NL tour, reach hotel at 2:30am, have to wake up at 5am). But
it didn’t matter! We came that far, we must try again to meet the Green Lady!
Morning view from the
hotel room.
Last day in Tromsø, we went up
to Mount Storsteinen with FJELLHEISEN Cable car. NOK140 return ticket.
420m above sea level.
Finally we have clear sky and great weather!!
Very nice view.
At the harbour, it was really windy
and cold!
After this, we went on our second try to catch the northern light. There were ehm, I think about 15 people on the bus.
This night, 23rd Sep 2014 – the exact date of
northern hemisphere’s autumn equinox, the Green Lady bestowed her grace on us!
I knew I would see it, I knew it! We’re only about 15min into the bus ride, and
someone saw the northern light! I was sleeping and suddenly awaken by the
commotion, and saw a bright cloud-like shine in the sky to the right. The
driver then tried to find somewhere safe to stop the bus. Everyone else started
setting up their big black DSLRs. I was a bit hesitant and embarrassed to whip
out my prosumer Panasonic camera with a lightweight aluminum tripod. But what
the heck, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t sure how my photo would turn out. And the first
photo I took blew me away.
The sky was EXTREMELY clear throughout the night. And the
Green Lady was dancing through the sky the whole night!! I was so grateful!
Lady Aurora was there the whole night, by 1:30am, some of us, have had enough viewing of her and was tired. Plus it was really cold standing in the snow. So they were already resting in the bus, sleeping.. But not me, I ain't gonna waste my time sleeping while Lady Aurora was still out there, dancing :)
Ricardo took photos for us. And I bloody forgot to smile (we
had to pose for a few second because long exposure was needed) and the photo
turned out really horrible, with me looking sad and tired.. But thanks to
myself, I edited the photo to let myself have a little smile… hehehee…. I may
look a wee bit weird in this photo but it’s better than looking ugly..!
Here are some videos
and photos of us in Tromsø.
