We spent the first half of today in transit to Tromsø. We left the Bergen Bør at ~5:20 am and had one of the smoothest airport experiences either of us could remember. We were initially concerned that without something like TSA Pre-check (a US exclusive), Haleigh would have to deal with a huge hassle about her insulin pump. But nei, they were helpful, courteous, and even offered to hold the it for her when she went through the metal detector. Maybe common sense is a common virtue here.

We checked into our hotel early and grabbed lunch at Full Steam. This was the second time on this trip that we were the only people eating in a restaurant at a normal meal time, and I’m dying to know why. The food was great—Haleigh had another bowl of fish soup and I tried a reindeer burger. That’s 2 for 2 with me being unable to discern a difference between reindeer and normal American fare (and have I ever encountered a burger I didn’t like?).

We embark on an Aurora watch cruise in another hour or so, but I’m not holding out much hope we’ll see anything. The weather here is much like the weather at home—albeit a bit colder in Tromsø, but not by much. The clouds are starting to break up, so who knows… maybe tomorrow morning we’ll get a Day 4.5 post.

The rest of the afternoon was fairly uneventful. We stocked up on groceries for our Waterfront apartment at the Melangen Resort, since we know once we arrive we won’t really be able to come back into town and all our meals will be at the resort… So we wanted to give ourselves some options for our last couple days in Norway. I was fascinated by the bread slicing machine and the fact that this market doesn’t even bother selling pre-sliced bread. Amazing.

In the meantime, here are a few snaps from today:

Update:

There were no lights tonight, but I did get a couple more cool shots. This first one was a 30 second exposure at f/16, ISO 500. Not a bad substitute for the Aurora tonight. 😊