Day 11, Feb 08, 2025, Tromso Cable Car and Northern Lights

We actually sleep in today with no alarm! We get up around 8:30 AM and go down to breakfast. We continue to negotiate our evening schedules and meanwhile head off to find the mountain tram. We ride the local bus, stopping to visit the Arctic Cathedral where we pay $8 each to go in. It’s nice but not worth the money.

We get back on the local bus and arrive at the queue for the Fjellheisen Cable Car at 11 AM. It takes over 2 hours in line to get to the tram ride up.

Our cameras are entertained and take several photos from the top. It has only cost $65USD for the round trip ride. Some people choose to hike one direction! Crazy!

We get back to the hotel to find our evening schedules are working perfectly. We dropped the reindeer excursion (there wasn’t enough snow for the sleigh ride) in favor of a Northern Lights Chase Bus. So we kick back for an hour and bundle up for the night. We find a local restaurant that serves good seafood soup and have an early dinner. Outside the hotel is a Sami Shop store and Elee clowns around with a stuffed reindeer in front! We even see an electric Porsche charging station!

Then it’s off to the bus for the Northern Lights Tour. This is a different Tour Group from our main Tour. We meet the bus at an agreed upon location and board. The tour guides deliver. Brendan and Meda deliver a fun night with Adrian driving the bus. The bus travels approximately an hour to get away from the city lights. We are taken to a fjord with magnificent mountain backdrops and get a Northern Light show that is fun! Brendan and Meda describe how to spot when the Aurora Borealis begins and it is different than we thought. What we look at when we look up looks like high wispy clouds. So I set the camera up on a tripod and take a shot of the ‘high clouds’. Whoa! Those ‘high clouds’ are green! So exposure after exposure are taken and before I know it, the ‘green’ is evident with the naked eye!

The band of Auroras grows brighter and darker green within a half hour. This show goes on for almost 2 hours.

More fun shots are taken and our cameras are having a blast!

Brendan and Meda light a campfire after and teach those interested how. Many campfire stories are told of Northern Lights lore and Sami legends.

After everyone boards the bus again, we head out towards Tromso. There is the promise of stopping on the way back if any activity is spotted. No activity is seen. We get back in our room about 1 AM and turn in.