Alpine Flowers and Snowy Mountains

My last day in Tromsø, and Norway.
The weather was good this morning, a light covering of cloud and no rain. I had planned to go to the alpine botanical garden on Monday but changed my mind due to the weather.
It’s quite a small park but with lots of plants. They are sorted into to different regions as there are plants from alpine regions all over the world. It was a nice way to spend the morning. I don’t have names for most of the plants.

I came back into Tromsø and had a quick lunch of stockfish soup. This time having a tomato rather than milk/cream base. It was good. I think I’ve eaten seafood everyday except one day on the boat when I had the daily special of gyros.

I then went on a fjord cruise. I’ve been on one every place I’ve stayed in, except Oslo. There I rode the ferry around the harbour.
Calling it a fjord cruise may be a bit of a misnomer as we only entered the Ramfjord for a couple of I’m before turning around. We didn’t go to the end of the fjord which I’ve done on all the other cruises.
The fjord didn’t have the dramatic steep mountains of other fjords but it did have snow capped mountains in pretty autumn colours.
Coming out of the fjord we passed by a previously super secret submarine base that was built during the Cold War with the backing of NATO. It was decommissioned and then sold in 2011 but after a company linked to the Russian government rented it was bought by a company that works with the Norwegian defence forces and it’s used for military training.

We then went to an old fish processing factory. It had some information about the life of fishermen and their families in the past. The most interesting item on display was the two thumbed gloves. The thumb wears out the quickest on the gloves and as the fishermen were often away from their families (and the knitters in the family) for months at a time they had two thumbed gloves. When one thumb wore out they turned the glove around and used the other thumb.
We also had the opportunity to taste herring, halibut and dried cod. The halibut and herring were good. The dried cod is sold in supermarkets here everywhere and while it would make a good high protein low carb chip for dip or maybe in some miso soup, on its own it wasn’t great.

We then headed back to Tromsø. It started raining and the waters got a bit choppy but it wasn’t too rough.

I fly to Manchester in the morning via Oslo. There used to be a lot of flights from Tromsø to other cities outside Norway but due to world events and the economy the number of these flights has been cut drastically. I was speaking to a couple from Saudi Arabia on the cruise and they took 4 flights and 24 hours to get to Tromsø. They had a few long layovers and it sounded exhausting. I’m glad I dedicated to travel by boat.Lue lisää