The island of Magerøya is now connected to the Norwegian mainland by a bridge. Prior to that bridge’s construction, anyone wishing to see Nordkap, the northernmost point in “mainland” Europe (it’s an island, but a close-coastal island, I guess is how they justify that?), had to take a boat. I took most of these from the tour bus which took us from Honningsvåg along the windswept landscapes and rocky coastal plains up to Nordkap.
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…
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 :-).
(so much world, so little time....) 