Nordkapp is continental Europe’s northernmost point, at 71N, located in the county of Finnmark, Norway’s northernmost county. In our first post from this stop I showed you the main town; today I’m showing you the marker above & below, plus some of the surroundings and various photos from the history exhibits and dioramas inside the museum, giftshop and cafe building. Before they built the road and museum, people had to rock up in boats and scale the cliffs: that’s one of the dioramas below :-). And yes, in 1907 the King of Thailand visited Nordkapp; as you see it was rather cold and windy when we were there so we enjoyed thinking of balmier climes…
From Bergen op Zoom in NL (last post) to Bergen in Norway as my plane approached just over a month ago above, and as our ship pulled out (below) to begin our journey on up to all the wonderful things I’ve been sharing with you from that Norway cruise. I don’t think these are the same bridge but can’t be sure b/c I wasn’t very well oriented, and they may in fact be the same…
This is the town of Honningsvåg shortly after 2pm on the afternoon of January 25th, the northernmost port call on our trip at pretty much 70N degrees. I took this shot as our boat began to pull away for the journey to the last port call where Gary & I moved on for our night at the Snow Hotel, in Kirkenes. We’ve shared only one post from Kirkenes so far, but will share more in due course – there were reindeer, sled dogs, ice beds and ice sculptures in the snow hotel and so much more still to come just from that one little border town in farthest-north Norway! From the dock here at Honningsvåg, we boarded a bus for the only formal paid side-trip that we signed up for: by road up to the actual Nordkapp itself, the northernmost point in continental Europe at 71N degrees. We haven’t yet shown you Nordkapp either…but it’s coming, whenever I catch up to it in the blog. Hugs, and enjoy these views of yet another interesting place in the world. Perhaps enjoy a bit of armchair tourism and dreaming about ways you can also enjoy the world around you, as an antidote to following whatever phone, computer or media alerts might be otherwise pulling you into non-productive feedback loops? The world’s still out (t)here, friends, so do let’s remember to enjoy it :-).
Mountains and towns along the coast all taken the morning after we crossed into the arctic circle (where we spent a total of more than four days), before our walk around town during the port call at Bodø. At the bottom, you see a bit of the sun lingering below the horizon shortly before 9am that day – it probably officially rose around 10, and you’ll see from the earlier Bodø photos when it really set, which I think was around 2pm.
When Ålesund burned in 1904, Kaiser Wilhem II was a big supporter of its rebuilding in this lovely Jugenstil (Art Nouveau) style. Other towns we visited on the cruise had rebuilt after a fire, but none with such royal support! 🙂
Our coastal-Norway cruise wrapped up early Sunday in Kirkenes, a town closer to Murmansk than to any other large-ish city I know of. It’s at 69N degrees; the arctic circle starts at 66N degrees. The above photo, taken shortly before noon, and two minutes after the take-off photo below right so at whatever altitude our plane had gained by that point, shows you the sun managing to peak both through some clouds, and over the horizon. We knew that at ground level the sun had only begun to peak above the horizon the week before we arrived in Kirkenes, and in general the most we had during the three full days we spent inside the arctic circle were maybe five hours of long dawn / dusk light (the same, with the sun actually above the horizon and maybe peaking through clouds) for a couple hours in the middle of it. It messes with one’s head and sense of meal and bedtimes, when full dark lasts until 9am and resumes by 2pm 🙂
(so much world, so little time....) 