Quiet day in Tromsø

Sleep in this morning after all the excitement of last night.
When I did get going I’m sure I saw snow on the mountains surrounding the town. Googling seemed to insist that there was no snow about but it looked like snow to me.

Went down to Polaria, the Tromsø aquarium. It has a large focus on the effects of climate change on the arctic environment. The effects aren’t great.
Their fish stock is much less than the Ålesund aquarium. They have 7 seals, 3 bearded seals, 3 harbour seals (Ålesund and Lofoten aquariums also have harbour seals) and a ringed that are a mixture of rescues, taken for scientific research and born in the aquarium. I didn’t see anything of the ringed seal. He is very shy and they have construction going on and he was scared of the noise, spending most of his time underwear. The large bearded seal enjoyed her training. They focus on training while feeding here as opposed to just feeding at Ålesund. Ålesund has a large outdoor pool for them where as here it’s both a small indoor and very small outdoor pool while a new one is being constructed.

They showed a short movie so Svalbard, it truly is a unique place, as well as one on the aquarium and another on the northern lights.

From there I went to Full Steam which is another of those museums that seems to exist so the founder has somewhere to display all their memorabilia. It had sections on Sami culture and the the history of the Tromsø harbour.

I then wandered around the wharf and up what seems to be the shopping street in Tromsø. A mix of high end shops and tourist shops.Read more