Northern (De)Lights!

Still heading North, and our next stop took us back to Honningsvåg near the North Cape . . .


As we'd visited before the plan had been to head out on an excursion, only high winds and drifting snow meant we couldn't get out of town.


So that left us with a sunny couple of hours to revisit the delights of Honningsvåg . . . but this time in the snow (of which there was a lot, mostly piled up on the sides of the roads in giant heaps).


And again it was the snow that made the day, as we crunched our way along . . .

. . . dodging the snow shoveller as it worked its way through those heaps of snow, shunting them away for dumping in the sea . . .





. . . while old ladies scooted past us on their wooden sleds with their shopping!


By mid-afternoon we were heading back out to sea, watching the scenery go by.  This included passing by Finnkirka, a rock formation which resembles a church from a distance, and which was apparently used as a landmark by the local fisherfolk, indicating that they weren’t too far from a safe harbour:

The next day saw us reach the final destination on the Northbound section of our voyage - arriving in Kirkenes, close to the Russian border.



Here we'd booked ourselves onto an excursion to the Snow Hotel, which was located a short drive out of town - past First Lake, Second Lake and Third Lake (as named by miners who evidently lacked anything resembling a poetic turn of phrase!).




The hotel itself is mostly constructed from packed snow (which has better insulating properties than ice), although it has an ice bar through the main entrance, followed by a series of rooms (decorated with snow carvings) leading into a permanent facilities block:

Another highly enjoyable trip (everything looked fantastic in the sunshine), although I'm not sure I'd want to stay in the hotel (no windows, so it felt quite claustrophobic).  The hotel is part of a larger complex though - the cabins with large north facing windows (for viewing the Lights) looked much more comfortable.  It was also another husky sledding centre so we got to see more dogs (plus they also had reindeer!).

On the drive back to the ship, we stopped (rather precariously) at a viewpoint above the town - stunning vistas looking across to the ship and the sea:

So far, these posts have said a lot about the days, but what about the nights?  And more specifically the Lights (Northern), which were of course a big inspiration for the whole trip.  Over the last couple of nights we had seen them, but on the night after leaving Kirkenes, we had a brief window where they were truly lovely . . .

(Kudos to Martin for persevering with trying to capture what we could see on camera - not easy on board a moving ship!)