Travelling to Norway [Part III] - Tromso

This is gonna be a really lengthy post filled with lots of pictures because I am summarizing 4 days worth of pictures. 
Just in case you all forgot what my itinerary was. 
Here it is,

Singapore ✈ Oslo ✈ Tromso ✈ Bergen ✈ Oslo ✈ Singapore

Visiting Tromso was the main highlight of the trip because the city is further up north and that's where there's high probability of catching the Northern Lights! In Tromso, there are several tour companies that operate land tours for various winter activities such as Dog-Sledding, Reindeer sledding, Northern lights chase so on and so forth. 

I settled on a 4 day Wilderness Adventure by Tromso Adventures which was close to $2000sgd per pax. I know its pricey but considering that everything was planned for us from accommodation to the different activities, I did not mind giving a little bit extra. One of the solo activities like dog-sledding alone would have already cost about $200-300 euros.

Here's the breakdown of what out tour basically included:
-2 night stay at Clarion Hotel Bryggen (which was amazing)
-1 night stay at Camp Tamok (either a wooden cabin or sami tent)
-All meals during the stay at Camp Tamok
-Transfers from Tromso
-Proper winter wear (gloves, head lights, boots )

Plus a few other small little stuff that I kinda forgot? Domestic flight to Tromso was booked separately. My family and I booked a flight on Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) which took about 2 hours from Oslo.

Oslo airport is so efficient, everything is self service. From check-in to baggage drop, its all do-it-your-own. There were no staffs tending the counters at all, just a few to help out some lost passengers. I just had to key in my booking number for the flight at the self check in counters and my boarding pass + luggage tag will be printed out promptly. Brought my tagged luggage to the counter, scan the barcode on the tag... Boom! It goes all the way in to the belt and thats it!

They were pretty strict on the weight limit thou because I guess it was winter so many people will actually bring their sports equipment like skis, etc.

Heh there were a group of Norwegian male students at the airport who were part of a school team. Norwegien men are SUPER GOOD LOOKING. Blue eyes, blonde hair and their average height was about 1.8 and above. Almost close to being #princecharming. 

Ok, I sound like a pervert but anyhoos, I decided to ask them for a photo because I wanted to prove my point to my girlfriends. However, these are not the BEST. I SEEN MORE GOOD LOOKING ONES.

Waiting at the gate to board our flight.

2 Hours later, we arrived at Tromso!

AHHHHHHHHHH. SNOWWWWWWWWWW!

It was snowing extremely heavily when we reached Tromso. WIND+HEAVY SNOW is not a good thang. 

 We hired a 8 seater cab to send us to Clarions Bryggen hotel where we were lodging at the next few days. Tromso is a very small city so it only takes about 15 minutes from the airport to the city. 

Fun fact: If you look at Tromso's land on the map, it kinda looks like Singapore. BUT, Tromso population is about 70,000+ but the little red dot is close to 6 million. 

They didn't really have family rooms at the hotel so we ended up taking up 5 double rooms because there were 9 of us. BEST BED EVERRRRR. Extremely loved my stay for the past 4 days.

The view from my hotel room.

You can get around Tromso by foot, wasn't necessary to take the bus/cab.

Everybody made it to the winter wonderland in one piece!

Isn't the city beautiful? 

Everyone had to be very careful because when the snow melts, the roads became extremely slippery.

I had a bad fall on my last day while exploring the town. My back ached horribly for WEEKS. 

The hotel building was located just directly behind this small restuarant, Aunegarden. We had lunch over at there and their seafood sandwiches were fresh and yummy.

Pickled herring sandwich and shrimp sandwich. 

Pickled herring is a local delicacy served raw. Its like how we enjoy sashimi? 

Brandon ordered it and said it tasted WEIRD. I did not dare to try it HAHAHAHA as I wasn't a fan of raw stuff including sashimi. IKR.

Btw, both of these costs about $57 SGD. 

So expensive right?????????????? 

DON'T WORRY

BECAUSE

THERE

IS

BURGER

KING!!!!

Best part about this was it was open till about 2am. 

It was the "supper spot".

My dear girlfriend, Manisa flew all the way from Paris to join us for this adventure.

There was a jacuzzi at the rooftop of the hotel we were lodging at was the highlight .
Some of us went for an evening dip.

The view from the roof was breathtaking. On a clear day, you could see the alps alongside the harbor.


I love how the seagulls coincidentally photo-bomb this picture.

You must be thinking we are mad to be in our swimsuits at such cold temperatures. 

Honestly, it didn't felt cold while we were soaking but of course we made a run for it from the door into the jacuzzi. HAHAHA

All of us were like dashing towards the tub when we opened the door. 

The tour included dinner at the hotel's restaurant.




There was a corporate dinner held at the same time we were having dinner. Somehow one of the in-charge told the waitress to pass on the message to us to keep our volume down.
OH PLEASE? WE WERE NOT MAKING MUCH NOISES COMPARED TO THE WHOLE COMPANY YAPPING AWAY THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE DINNER?
They don't own the place anyway?


Pork collar with black pepper sauce



Apple strudel with caramelized apples topped with whipped cream


After dinner, Manisa and I decided to change and head out to explore Tromso at night.
Started drizzling halfway and it was bitterly cold. Like we tried to sneak into hotels/bars to keep us just warm for a short 5 minutes before we continued walking back.

 Night view of the harbour

 

You can see it started drizzling really heavily. Roads were all slippery and wet.

Tromso local library

In Europe, if you see a building that states,"Bibliotek" , it basically means the library.

I stuffed my hands into my coat pocket and made a quick run to the hotel. 

There was a coffee machine at the lobby. All I could think of was to make myself a cup of hot chocolate!!

You can see how red my face was . My nose felt like a rock and the coat, gloves, beanie were all wet from the rain.

Eventually, we had an early night because the 2nd day was realllyyyy long. 

It was Ice fishing first, and a transfer to Camp Tamok, a wilderness camp!!

Breakfast was included in our hotel stay which I found was the MOST comforting meal ever.

An extensive variety of food to choose from.

Mannn. It looks so good that I want to have it again. 

Next up, ICE FISHING!!!

We booked the ice fishing activity separately with Tourinlyngenalps. Ashjborn was the tour leader and he was so spontaneous. He even gave us a little discount because we were a group of 9 people.

Pickup was at a bus terminal just a stone throw away from our hotel. 

YOU HAVE TO BE ON TIME. When you're travelling in Europe, make sure that you are always punctual because none of the transport will wait for you, especially inter-city trains. The western people are extremely anal about being punctual.

The 1 hour bus ride took us to this ferry port where we would take a 20 minutes ferry to the other side of Tromso . Ashjborn and his team were already welcoming us at the port.                                                                     

             

Yea, the ferry transport cars and trucks too but you will still have to pay individual tickets for the number of people in the car.

You can actually see how heavy it was snowing.

Keeping warm in the ferry

25 Minutes later, we arrived at the opposite side of the port. An arranged van came to pick us up to the area where we were suited up in proper outfits for the activity.

Ashjborn and his team drove us further into the snow with the snowmobile so we could get to the frozen lake where we will be fishing.

It is extremely hard to capture photos while we were on the snow mobile and my camera can't operate well under cold weather. PFFFTTT, even my phone camera refuse to take photos. With the gloves, it made it even harder to take photos.

On-site....

In the middle of nowhere. literally.

By the way, this is how the "proper" outfit looks like. Its a heavy jumpsuit and after which you have to put on the boots that weight like 2KG!?!!

You kinda know when you need to go to the restroom, how much work is needed to undress yourself.

In order to fish, you will have to make a hole in the lake right?

So how do you go about that????????

Ashjborn *brings out mega drill*

He gave us a short brief and drilled a hole in like 2 MINUTES?! OR LESS

Time for us to get our hands down and dirty!

Its a manual drill so you actually have to locate a particular spot , choke it in the ice as hard as you can, start drilling by rotating and running in a circle. Halfway through, I gave up and let the guys continue drilling. 

Mom decided to photo-bomb. 

It's a pity I couldn't take more pictures because honestly, with the wind+snow+cold temperature, all I could think of was to keep myself warm. 

To our disappointment, no one manage to catch any fish. The one quality you need when you fish is PATIENCE. Obviously, we did not have it HAHA

Instead, Ashjborn planned a mini game for us.

After having so much fun, we cooked instant soup by the fire and enjoyed the scenery.



I didn't really like the soup so Sara and I tried making a snowman!

Lastly, a group picture with two of the guides.

The overall activity took about half a day. We rushed back to the hotel to get changed and pack for our pick up. It was an overnight stay at Camp Tamok.

The plan was to reindeer sled under the Northern Lights but the clouds were in the way.
 Just complete darkness and heavy snow fall.

 The leader explained about the lifestyle in Tromso to all of us and said like he had a reindeer farm with 400+ of them. Every summer, he has to hike the matured reindeers down to the camp ALL BY HIMSELF.

The whole group of 9 reached Camp Tamok and everyone was in bed within 30 minutes.

Photo grabbed from the tour's facebook

THEN.. THE SNORING CHALLENGE STARTED.

In Camp Tamok, there are two types of accomodations you can choose from. 

First, will be the wooden cabin, with proper bunk beds (our option)

Indoor of the wooden cabin

Second, is in the traditional Sami tent (refer below), the floor will be layered with reindeer skin and everyone will have their own sleeping bag to tug into!

 

There were guests that I met telling me that we were very lucky to sleep in the cabin because they had back pains after sleeping on the hard floor the whole night.

I love the idea of sleeping in the Sami tent but the group had people >50 years old so it was a better option to let them have sleep in a proper bed.

The next morning, the whole of Camp Tamok was covered in snow because of the heavy snow fall the night before.I woke up and glanced through the window and this is what it looked like...

 



Icicles formed on the cabin roof

Not something that I will experience everyday but the whole area was extremely beautiful beyond words.
Oh by the way, there was no running water in the camp so no one took a shower HAHAHA
Breakfast was served promptly at the lavvu tent.




The simple breakfast was able to keep us full till the end of our snowmobiling activity.
A bus ride took us to the area where we carried out our snowmobiling activity.

The instructor briefed us through the safety instructions efficiently and how to get the snow mobile started

Minutes later, we were paired up and ready to go!
There isn't much photos because I was the one taking control of the mobile most of the time!!!!!
Some points throughout the route, my friends flipped along with their snowmobile but the instructor manage to save them. Everyone had so much fun but it was tiring on the muscles.

Such a brilliant experience with the amazing views of the snow mountains.

We were transferred back to Camp Tamok to get a short rest before dog sledding in the evening.
Spent the time wandering around and having fun in the snow.

Don't let their looks deceive you... what they did next was uncalled for,

 Successfully, made our 2nd snowman .

 Dinner was served in the lavvu tent. On the menu, it was reindeer stew (Carrot & potato cubes with reindeer meat in cream sauce.) which tasted abit like beef?

Next up, DOG SLEDDING!!!!!

I felt nervous at first because it was my first time? Turned out to be really intuitive!

It was so dark the camera couldn't capture much. Sigh, if anyone of you are going for such activity, always remember to book the activity in the day.

The Alaskan huskies were running SOOOO QUICKLY, and there were several rules that you have to abide to when I drove the dogs.
I had to make sure my dogs were a distance away from the sledge infront of us. Along the route, there were some uphill parts so I had to run a little to help the dogs with the sledge. It sounds like a harzardous adventure but I absolutely loved it.

Throughout the whole time, all of us really wished we could see the northern lights but there was no luck.
I was not extremely disappointed because I knew, in the future there will be more chances for me to chase the lights? However, the parents might not because age will catch up with them.

Back at the Camp, the bus drove us back to our hotel in Tromso.
Woke up a hour earlier the following day to take a couple more pictures of the town.

It was Sunday so all the shops were closed.

On the same day, we booked a domestic flight to our next destination, Bergen!

Alas, I'm done writing this post .

The draft was in my log for the past month because I went back to Europe for another vacay.

If you all have any enquiries about my trip, feel free to drop me question in my ask.fm.

I'll be happy to help you! You will not regret spending so much money on such a trip because this experience will be etched in your memory forever.