The Joys of Travel

 

Five years ago at the moment that I took this picture, I was the southernmost person in all of Africa.  Today, along with the others in my group,  I was the northernmost person in all of Europe.  Unfortunately, I never saw the view of North Cape as it was completely fogged in.  But hey, I was there.

I was right about the nationalities of the people on the cruise.  There were four buses to North Cape from the cruise dock:  two in German, one in German and Norwegian, and one in French and English.  Needless to say, I was in the fourth bus and it was less than half full.

I was a bit concerned about my connections getting to the cruise but never considered that the one flight from Kirkenes, our end point, to Oslo would be canceled because SAS is on strike.  Do you know how hard it is to get to anywhere from Kirkenes?  There are no flights except the one SAS flight that was canceled.  It is a 24 hour drive to Oslo but there are no rental cars available.   Kirkenes might as well be the northernmost place in Europe as it is just as inaccessible.  The cruise line has arranged an eight hour bus ride to Rovaniemi, Finland, because FinnAir is not on strike.  Rovaniemi?  I can honestly say that I had never expected to visit there in my lifetime.

But it turns out that Rovaniemi is one of the largest cities in Finland and is famous, at least as much a random Finnish city can be famous.  Not only is it the capital of Lapland; more importantly, it is the Official Hometown of Santa Claus.  Who knew?  One of the don’t-miss sites is Santa Park (not to be confused with Santa Village which is also in Rovaniemi) where you can go to Elf School to learn how to become an elf.  How was this not on my can’t-miss list?

But back to Norway and the cruise.  Notwithstanding the uniformly gray skies, the scenery continues to be beautiful although the stops in cities are a bit underwhelming.  Trondheim is famous for its classic Gothic Cathedral, but in Tromso they have the much more interesting Arctic Cathedral which looks like slabs of ice.  Tromso also has a Polar Museum with information about North and South Pole excursions and winter hunting trips.  Needless to say, a lot of Norwegians were involved and Roald Amundsen is still a national hero. All I can say is that those guys were nuts, spending months essentially snowed in with whatever they brought with them or could kill.  And the excursions in the early twentieth century to the North Pole took months, if not years.  One genius had the brilliant idea that if he sailed a ship into the Arctic ice, the flow of the ice would bring the ship over the North Pole.  Wrong.  Although he spent years building a super strong ship that could withstand the pressure of the ice, they ended up iced in for over two years and never got more than a few more degrees north.  Amundsen finally made it over the North Pole in a airship.

And one last unique landform that we sailed by - Finnkirka. Unfortunately, I never saw it as I was on my computer trying to figure out how to get out of Kirkenes.