Our trip to Tromsø

We went to Tromsø during the Easter break in 2024 and wanted to share a bit about our experiences. We are a family of four, with a 9 year old and an 11 year old at the time of our trip to Tromsø.

Getting there

Route with public transportation

We live near Copenhagen, Denmark, and had planned to use public transportation to travel to Tromsø and back. We had planned take one train from Copenhagen Central Station to Stockholm Central Station. From Stockholm Central Station, we had booked a night train all the way to Narvik. From Narvik, we had found a bus that would take us the rest of the way to Tromsø from Narvik, a bus ride of about 4 hours.

To be exact, our outbound journey was planned to start from Copenhagen Central Station at 12:19 March 24th on a train due to arrive at 17:37 at Stockholm Central Station. The night train to Narvik was planned to depart from Stockholm Central Station at 18:08 and arrive in Narvik at 12:40 the next day. We were a bit worried whether we would have sufficient time to find the night train at Stockholm Central Station, but to make use of the travel guarantee offered by Vy when booking through them, it is only possible to choose the one journey found by their search system on their homepage. We called Vy to ask if we could book an earlier train from Copenhagen to minimize the risk of missing the night train from Stockholm, but this was not possible if we wanted to maintain the travel guarantee. Finally, the bus from Narvik to Tromsø was planned to depart from Narvik at 14:00 on March 25th, and arrive in Tromsø at 18:25.

Our return trip was planned to begin on March 30th with the bus from Tromsø at 9:00, arriving in Narvik at 13:10. From Narvik, we had booked the night train departing at 15:11 and arriving at Stockholm Central Station at 10:09 on March 31st. Our train back to Copenhagen was planned to depart from Stockholm at 12:21 and arrive at Copenhagen Central Station at 17:33.

Change of plans

About three weeks before our planned departure, we received a message that our train from Copenhagen Central Station would be departing from Malmø instead. That was a bit annoying, but something we could easily handle. However, about a week later, we received a new message stating that the train we had booked a sleeping compartment on would be affected by a derailment north of Kiruna, and we would have to change first to a seat-only train and then, a bit later, to a bus. We were not able to find information about what time of the night these changes would occur, and were reluctant to risk arriving in Tromsø without having been able to sleep. In the end, we decided to cancel the public transportation journey, as we had been informed was an option in the message about the changes.

Trying to cancel the trip we had booked through Vy turned out to be quite a challenge. Vy does not accept cancellations in writing, so it was not possible to just send an e-mail. Instead, it was necessary to call their Norwegian number to make use of the option to cancel the trip. This was quite frustrating since there was a lot of waiting time to get through the phone queue (which also caused our phone bill to be somewhat higher than usual due to the fee for calling a foreign number and waiting in line to get through).

While we would still be interested in making the trip to Narvik by train, we would put quite some effort into looking for ways to book the trip through another company than Vy.

Getting flight tickets instead was very easy and about half the price of the public transportation journey. Additionally, we got several extra days in Tromsø, with a stay in Tromsø from the afternoon of March 24th till late afternoon March 31st instead of arriving by bus late March 25th and departing in the morning March 30th. We got a direct flight from Copenhagen to Tromsø with a duration of 2h35m on the outbound trip, leaving from Copenhagen at 12:15 on March 24th and arriving in Tromsø at 14:50. For the trip back, we were not able to find a direct flight. Our flight back departed from Tromsø at 17:25 on March 31st and arrived in Oslo at 19:20. The flight to Copenhagen departed from Oslo at 20:30, arriving in Copenhagen at 21:40.

Eating out

We were surprised at the large number of restaurants for such a relatively small town. Unfortunately, a lot of the restaurants were entirely closed or had limited opening hours due to Easter. It was especially limited during lunch hours, so we often went for fast food for lunch (Burger King, McDondald’s, and the bakery Backstube). Luckily, our daily rhythm includes quite early dinners, so we managed to find available tables at restaurants in the evening although we were not good at booking in advance. On most nights, we observed guests coming in about half an hour after us, who were turned away with the message that no tables were vacant.

Activities each day

Here is what we did each day, detailed descriptions can be found by clicking the link for each day.

Day 1: Arrival and dinner at Nyt.

Day 2: Troll museum, lunch at Backstube, search for ski goggles, Tromsø Cathedral, Magic Ice Bar and dinner at Biff huset Skarven.

Day 3: Cable car (Fjellheisen), lunch at Fjellstua Café Og Restaurant, Polaria, dinner at CASA INFERNO, and “Northern Lights by Minibus” with EnjoyTheArctic.

Day 4: Arctic Cathedral, lunch at McDonald’s, reindeer and Sami culture and history

Day 5: Husky sledding tour (with lunch) and dinner at Huken Brygg.

Day 6: Tromsø Museum, lunch at Burger King, Polarmuseum and dinner at Elefant Indisk Restaurant.

Day 7: Nordnorsk Vitensenter (simple lunch) and dinner at Raketten and Peppes Pizza.

Day 8: Lunch at Koselig and departure.