Day 06 - Thu - 10/02/2025 - Tromsø

This morning I woke up first at 7:20am and realized we were almost to Tromsø.  I showered and prepared for my day before heading up to breakfast in the Lido.  After breakfast I went down to the shore excursions desk and purchased shuttle tickets for the bus into town as well as for the next day in Alta. Our ship had to dock at a commercial port about 2.5 miles from downtown.  The roundtrip tickets were $20 which seems a bit expensive for full busses.

We returned to the room and gathered our things and scanned off the ship and got in line for the bus.  The bus route into town is essentially one 2 mile long tunnel.  We were dropped near the Radisson hotel.

Our first stop was the Troll museum which is a quirky multi media presentation about trolls in Norwegian culture.  It's located on the 3rd floor of a a building near the bus stop.  It was a delightful visit.

Next we walked to the Polar Museum which was a short walk away from the Troll museum.  This museum covers the exploration of the Arctic including hunting, trapping. exploration, and general life in this hostile climate.  Afterwards we found fish soup at a charming nearby restaurant called the Bårstua Café.  It was a bit expensive at $25 per bowl but quite yummy.

Although the church's website indicated they didn't open until 3:15pm we decided to walk across the bridge to the mainland and see if by chance the Arctic Cathedral would be open. This long and high bridge has two lane vehicle traffic and on one side of the bridge is pedestrian only and on the other side of the bridge is a bicycle path. We obviously took the walking path up over the bridge and at the top it was quite windy, but very nice views of the city.

Once we reached the Arctic cathedral, we observed that it was in fact open for visitors and we paid the entry fee, which was about eight dollars US. This cathedral is very striking with its sharply angled concrete walls coming to a peak. Inside the building is quite plain with elegant chandeliers hanging down the middle and a very large stained glass window at the altar end of the church. That window depicts Jesus with his hands extended downward, and individuals with their hands extended upward towards him. There's some other symbolism in the glass that I'll not describe here, but leave it to the readers imagination to study the picture of the stained glass window. On the other end of the church is a giant what looks to be stainless steel or aluminum pipe organ. In the basement of the church is a collection of pictures about the construction of the church and I found it very interesting that there was one room that we had to pass through that had steel doors not unlike one would find on a ship on each side. I inquired as to why they have the steel doors. The person at the gift shop said it was designed and built in the 1950s and 60s and we were in the middle of the Cold War so this was created to be a shelter against nuclear fallout. Later the room became known as the corpse room as that's where they put the caskets for people who are having funeral services at the church.

Leaving the church, we walked back across the bridge towards town and went to find the Wooden Cathedral, which is the northernmost wooden cathedral in Norway. To reach it we walked down a large and long pedestrian mall with many shops. We found the cathedral, but it was closed, even though the opening hours said that it was supposed to be open. We did some shopping at the Sami shop (the Sami are the indigenous people of this area). We continued walking back along the pedestrian walkway and encountered a McDonald's with people taking pictures of the McDonald's, which I found a little unusual until I saw that the writing on the wall indicated that this was the northernmost McDonald's in the world. So we took a picture of it as well, and enjoyed a soda and a burger to commemorate that we had eaten at this northernmost McDonald's in the world. We continued our trek down the mall and shopped in many of the little shops. There was even a church thrift store and Angela was able to find a very nice knitted wall cap. We made our way back to the shuttle pick up point and borded a bus which after it was full, drove us back to the port. 

We scanned back onto the ship and deposited our belongings in our stateroom before heading up to the Lido for a dinner. We finished dinner just before seven and headed down to the showroom for the evening entertainment, which was a black singer, Nate Simpson, who presented a repertoire of Motown music. He was very good. Afterwards, we made our way to O'malley's Irish pub and listened to the Irish duet, Emerald Tide,  sing Irish songs. In between their two sets, there was a violin duet, Electric Waves, who were also quite nice.

We had hoped to see the Northern Lights, but despite a strong Aurora forecast, it was too cloudy to see them. So we headed back to the stateroom and watched the Wake show which is presented by the cruise director, Pauline who interviews various ship personnel and provides guidance about the upcoming day. We also watched the re-broadcast of the Alta shore excursion by Debbie.

Tomorrow morning we're due into Alta around 11 AM where we have an overnight stay and hope to see the Northern Lights as this is considered to be the Northern Light capital of Norway. It's also a tender port so we have to get tender tickets and we are in the lowest priority group. 1/3 of the passengers are of elite status and then those are followed by passengers who booked princess shore excursions. We're in the third group who are independent travelers.