Our trip to Tromsø — Day 3
We walked across the bridge to see the Arctic Cathedral and ride the cable car (Fjellheisen) to Storsteinen. However, the Arctic Cathedral turned out to be closed due to a funeral. We found out that this was actually announced on the website under opening hours (https://www.ishavskatedralen.no/en/the-arctic-cathedral/opening-hours/).
Fjellheisen
Then we went to the cable car. We were lucky to arrive 5 minutes before the next departure. There was a long line so we were afraid there would not be room for us on this departure. Fortunately they kept running the cable cars until the line was empty. The ride itself was pretty quick (about 4 minutes). We found out you get the best view by standing facing away from the mountain. When we arrived at the top it was colder than we had expected although we had try to dress warm. The ice and snow made it quite slippery. Because of the ice and cold we ended up just enjoying the view from the café. To be able to walk around on the top, it would probably be a good idea to bring ice and snow grips for shoes and warm clothes.
Lunch at Fjellheisen
For lunch we stayed at Fjellheisen , where there is a restaurant called Fjellstua Café Og Restaurant. We thought the food was decent but not fantastic and the portions were a bit small. After lunch we took the cable car back down and walked back to the hotel.
Polaria
After an hour or two at the hotel we decided to visit the aquarium Polaria. We only had one hour at Polaria, which was a bit too little time. When we visited Polaria we watched the seal feeding and training, which lasted about half an hour. To see the exhibits at Polaria properly, one and a half hour should probably be set aside.
Dinner at CASA INFERNO
We had seen that the reviews of CASA INFERNO on TripAdvisor were really good and had tried to get a table on the first evening in Tromsø but it was fully booked. On this day it was also fully booked online but by calling the restaurant we were able to get a table. We ordered four different pizzas, one for each of us, and all were really good, although the youngest of us thought there was a bit too much cheese. From looking around at the other tables, it seemed like the pizzas were meant to be shared as there were special serving dishes that made it easy to share multiple pizzas.
Northern Lights tour
We spent quite a while looking for affordable Northern Lights tours with good reviews, that were not sold out. Another requirement we had was that the tour was not too long and did not start too late since we were traveling with younger children, so we would like to have a chance of getting back to the hotel before 2am. We started looking in end-January, at which point it turned out that many tours were already sold out for the Easter break in the end of March. Fortunately, we found a tour by Enjoy The Arctic, which we enjoyed a lot.
We had booked a tour with departure at 6pm, but on the day of the trip this time was changed to 8pm since it doesn’t get dark until around 22 or 23 at this time of year and the conditions were favorable around Tromsø on this day so we did not have to drive for a long time to get to a good spot. Our guide told us that it is sometimes necessary to drive as far away as the Finnish border to find a spot with good conditions for viewing the Northern Lights.
Since it can get really cold at night, it is recommended to wear warm clothing. We all wore long merino wool undergarments as well as long pants, ski pants, and three to five layers of shirts/sweaters, gloves, scarves, and hats. Despite this, we got cold despite also wearing the thermal suits provided on the tour. Our tour guide had built a camp fire that we could warm up by, and provided a choice of hot coffee or tea, as well as a cake for everyone. It was also possible to go inside the minibus to heat up, but this of course meant risking missing part of the Northern Lights, as they sometimes only appeared briefly before returning a while later.
Tripods for cameras were also provided, but we only had phones so were not able to take advantage of this. In hindsight, we should probably have either brought a camera or our own tripod for phones. Our guide was very helpful with taking pictures with his camera as well, that he shared with us after the tour.
We were back at the hotel at around 1am.
Our guide was very friendly and knowledgeable and eager to share his knowledge, and it was clear that it meant a lot to him to help us enjoy the best experience possible, both in terms of finding a good place to view the Northern Lights, not taking longer than necessary, discussing the phenomenon with the participants that were interested in this, and helping us to keep warm. We highly recommend this tour.
Below are some of the pictures that we took ourselves.
Summary
We had a great (and long) day, starting with a cable car trip on “Fjellheisen”, where we had lunch at the top, followed by a few hours of rest at the hotel, then a walk to the aquarium Polaria, dinner at the pizza restaurant CASA INFERNO, and then finally our Northern Lights chase tour, which, to me, was the highlight of the trip and the main reason for visiting Tromsø. We were very lucky to have excellent conditions and my anticipation and hopes for the chase were more than realized, in great part due to our fantastic guide Andrei from Enjoy the Arctic.
You might also be interested in going to the post giving an overview of our trip to Tromsø, which also includes links to more details of each day we were there.
