Tromso is a truly amazing place, filled with such natural beauty. We’re so grateful to have been able to experience all that we did above the Arctic Circle, with such clear weather and fresh snow at the start of our 12 night stay.
However, while in Tromso, we experienced some of the most stressful and awful incidences of our whole trip. More on that at further down in the blog post. But first, lets admire some of the stunning scenery.
The photos below were taken on a day with beautiful weather - the 22nd of December I think. I was able to wander around town by myself, capturing these beautiful photos during the daylight hours.
Our Christmas day was very quiet and cosy! We had prepared a few small surprise gifts for the girls and Santa also stopped by with some small presents - mainly books, colouring pens, digital watches and a few trinkets. We were planning to go to the English-spoken Christmas Service at the Arctic Cathedral at 4pm, but by 3pm the bad weather had set in, with rain and strong winds. So we stayed in a watched movies and played monopoly instead. I cooked reindeer stew for dinner and I’m pleased to report it taste just like the stew at the Reindeer excursions with the Sami. (You can get frozen reindeer meat at the local supermarket)
Bad Weather, Missed Flights and Lost Toys
From Christmas Day to the 28th. The weather really turned - it was rainy and windy and the snow all turned to slush, making it really slippery and wet to walk around. I really feel for people who arrived in Tromso on Christmas or after. So many of the whale watching tours and northern lights tours were cancelled - even the cable car stopped running due to the high winds. On these days we ventured off to two of the museums, which I’ve written about in a seperate post, but simply walking around the footpaths felt really dangerous.
But departing Tromso was one of the worst, most stressful things to happen on our trip, thanks to a rescheduled flight that we missed, resulting in us having to book a whole new flight and an extra night of (very expensive) accommodation 😭😭. What kind of airline bumps a whole family to an earlier flight with less than 12 hours notice - those 12 hours literally being the night before 😡😡😡😡. Wideroe, that’s who!
Our original flight wasn’t cancelled either, so there was no real reason that we were bumped - I’d be ok with being bumped to a later flight, we would atleast have had a chance to reorganise ourselves. We were definitely not prepared for getting to the airport at 6am rather than 12pm on the 28th.
However, I am proud of how the whole family handled the awful situation. Braino and I kept our cool, no one raised their voices or lost the plot or had an emotional meltdown. We just got things sorted as best we could in a calm manner.
I’m also incredibly grateful that we have budgeted well and stuck to our budget, which means we have a healthy amount in contingency put aside for unforeseen things like this. I’m currently trying our luck at getting some sort of reimbursement from Wideroe but I don’t like our chances. Our travel insurance unfortunately won’t cover something like this - I’ve gone through the terms and conditions in detail.
The other absolute lowlight of our time in Tromso, was loosing Hallie’s treasured toy wombat Happy Bang. It’s been her comfort toy ever since she was one year old and has become some what of a family icon. She mysteriously disappeared from a carry bag that was filled with other toys, gloves and beanies while we were out. ( I was carrying it, so I’m the most to blame 😭😭😭)
We retraced our steps multiple times, searching high and low, asking in the 7-Eleven we stopped at, contacting the bus company and even making the trip out to their head office to search through the lost and found. The lady who worked at the lost and found department put in an amazing effort to search all the 34 buses and 26 buses for us, the two buses we caught during the short window of time were she could have disappeared. We even posted on a Tromso community Facebook group in the hopes someone picked Happy Bang up.
Hallie handled the devastation really maturely, she even set up a gravestone for Happy Bang in the yard of the accommodation when we left. Braino and I seemed more devastated about it really. We thought Happy Bang would be the one toy we’d keep forever. It feels akin to losing a pet. We have since implement a no toys to be brought out on day trips rule, even Farley’s favourite Leprechaun Clover. They always end up in a bag or with Braino or I carrying them and we can’t handle another loss, we already had a few close calls before this incident.
Ironically, we did purchase exactly the same wombat toy many years ago, in the instance that this exact thing would happen. It’s called Sad Bang but it’s face isn’t as cute so it never achieved the same level of attachment as Happy Bang (the name Bang is a reference to the book Happy Birthday Wombat from the Diary of a Wombat book series, where the wombat pops balloons with a BANG! . I read the book to Hallie as a baby and Bang was one of her first words. I guess she always associated the word bang with wombats.)
Rest In Peace Happy Bang, I hope she has found a loving home in Tromso.