Northern Lights Tour Day 12

By travelerdon on March 8, 2025

Day 12, Feb 09, 2025, Travel to Narvik, Norway

We get up at 7:00 AM and go down to breakfast. The typical breakfast buffet is, once again, very good! Then we go back to the room and pack up our bags. We head for the bus at 9:30. Today we make the drive to Narvik. It will be a three and one half hour drive. We stop at Go2s for pizza and beer. We underestimate the size of the pizzas and can only finish half of it between the two of us! They have a local IPA and I indulge. After all, it’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere! We end up taking half the pizza with us back on the bus!

The scenery is breathtaking! Watching the river ice is intriguing, sometimes frozen, sometimes not. Driving along fjords gives a scenic view that is mesmerizing. Viktor drives down one side of a fjord and then back along the other. We have lost count of the tunnels we go through.

Norway has over 1000 road tunnels, the longest is twenty four kilometers long! Very few tunnels have any guardrails and the walls are rough hewn rock! I can’t imagine the mess if you left your lane and came in contact with the side! We are told that some tunnels even cross and have roundabouts in them, but we haven’t encountered one of those. We do see a couple random emergency lay-bys for safety.

I mistakenly thought the architecture in Norway would be unique. We do see some grass roofs but photographing them is near impossible from the moving bus. I will keep trying. Most buildings are wood frame houses and barns throughout the countryside. Buildings in the cities are typical, with the occasional uniquely designed library or museum.

Narvik is an interesting city. We visit the Red Cross War Museum next to our hotel for the night. Having never been interested in history as a child (not classes I excelled in), I find it more interesting as an adult. I feel educated about Norway’s involvement in WWII. It seems that Norway was rich in iron ore and steel and was much sought after by Germany. Not to mention the protection all the fjords gave to the military ships!

After spending hours in the museum, we check in to our room and then take a walk around town. The weather is wet and snowy. But it’s not so severe that it stops us from our hike. There is a bar on the top (16th) floor of our hotel that opens at 6:00 PM. So guess where we find ourselves at 6? We find most of our tour group there and we queue up for drinks and tapas.