Last snowy-landscape shots from the Snowhotel Kirkenes, in Norway’s Finnmark county. Above, we’re looking out from the lovely big windows in the dining room over the frozen, snow-covered fjord that runs south from the harbor, on which we also did our King Crab outing that day. At the bottom of this post, for those interested, is a panorama of the compound in which you can see, at the far left, a conical-roofed cafe building which is next the sled dog kennels (shared in our prior post from Kirkenes), then the larger modern glass & brick structure that houses check-in and tour-group visits (tour groups do short trips for the King Crab, Husky Sled Dogs, etc.), then the heated modern lodge hotel building with rounded roofs up the hill from left to right, then the large bulk of the actual frozen Snowhotel itself (where we slept on our ice beds), and at the far right the building with restaurant, sauna, changing and warming lounge reserved for overnight snowhotel guests.
The Snowhotel Kirkenes sits, of course, in Norway’s northernmost Finmark County. And houses both reindeer (whom one can feed) and huskies (whom one can pet).
The main city center of Tromsø is actually on the island of Tromsøya (Romssasuolu in the Northern Sami dialect of its first nation inhabitants). In the photo above, the island and thus main city center is to the left, taken as we pulled into the port. Leaving, a few hours later, we passed under that bridge you see above, and during our several-hour port call we walked a bit more than halfway across that bridge, on the other (mainland) side of which is the iconic church you’ll see in some photos below.
This post is my reminder to any of us sweating in northern summers that we wanted more sun, back when the days were short and snow blanketed the ground e.g. during our flight from Kirkenes down to Oslo back in January 🙂
There are windows in all these shots from the Snowhotel Kirkenes – starting with a photo of the frozen fjord taken from the dining room mid-morning after we arrived and checked in. Note that the photo at the very bottom, which looks rather late-night, was taken 3:26 pm. On January 26, so I think they said five days or a week after the sun returned to Kirkenes. 🙂
I think I’ll aim to use up my snowy and dark Norway shots in July & August, in hopes maybe it’ll help friends sweltering in hot summer weather appreciate the seasons a bit. Including myself, though sweltering hot remains, mercifully, a rare weather pattern here in A’dam specifically. Last from our short port call at Finnsnes in January.
No, that ice bear is not staffing the actual reception at the Snowhotel Kirkenes – that happens in a brick and mortar type building with heating, computers and so on. But this is the entrance the actual place you sleep on your actual (literal) ice bed. (Ice = water = source, as a reminder of this weird little series I’ve begun.) When I first showed you Kirkenes, I promised a photo of said ice beds. But it turns out I neglected to photograph the actual beds themsevles- sorry. I really thought I’d done so. Allow the various other ice furniture shown below to spark your imagination, along with the instruction manual from the (regular building, heated) changing room. For orientation, the ice sculptures below are just inside the entrance in the snow mound you see at the bottom. That mound is the thing itself, but to be clear: one only sleeps in the room; one does not linger in it during the rest of the non-sleep time of one’s stay. One instead catches King Crab or hangs out in the heated guest lounge drinking hot tea :-)…or feeds the reindeer, pets the huskies or sits by the outdoor fire, all of which we’ll show you in future posts.
After that last visit to Amsterdam, I flew home to California in late April, the end of a wonderfully wet and snowy rain season on the west coast: which meant lots of much-needed snow even in the mountains of California! As always, I aimed for a window seat and kept my camera handy. I no longer remember the precise route, but I think we went about 1/3 of the way up Greenland and across northern Canada, then angled down around the mountains between British Columbia & Calgary in Canada, and across into the US south of there still angling southwest. The four big photos (above, below, and after the gallery) are out of order — look closely and you’ll see the Hollywood sign on the hills in the photo of LA just above, as the plane flew inland then swung around and line up for the southern runway’s approach route. And I’m fairly sure the photo directly below is from Greenland. (Yes, a thing those from the East Coast of the US may not know is that when flying from the West Coast to Europe, one usually flies over Greenland, as opposed to just south of Iceland which I usually seem to do when flying from NYC.) The shots in the gallery are all in order. I think we crossed the Sierra Nevada south of Yosemite and I was seated as you see on the left of the plane, so I didn’t see Mt Whitney or Yosemite from the air, more’s the pity – the few times I have, my camera has not been handy. Oh well…next time :-). Enjoy!
After that last visit to Amsterdam, I flew home to California in late April, the end of a wonderfully wet and snowy rain season on the west coast: which meant lots of much-needed snow even in the mountains of California! As always, I aimed for a window seat and kept my camera handy. I no longer remember the precise route, but I think we went about 1/3 of the way up Greenland and across northern Canada, then angled down around the mountains between British Columbia & Calgary in Canada, and across into the US south of there still angling southwest. The four big photos (above, below, and after the gallery) are out of order — look closely and you’ll see the Hollywood sign on the hills in the photo of LA just above, as the plane flew inland then swung around and line up for the southern runway’s approach route. And I’m fairly sure the photo directly below is from Greenland. (Yes, a thing those from the East Coast of the US may not know is that when flying from the West Coast to Europe, one usually flies over Greenland, as opposed to just south of Iceland which I usually seem to do when flying from NYC.) The shots in the gallery are all in order. I think we crossed the Sierra Nevada south of Yosemite and I was seated as you see on the left of the plane, so I didn’t see Mt Whitney or Yosemite from the air, more’s the pity – the few times I have, my camera has not been handy. Oh well…next time :-). Enjoy!
(so much world, so little time....) 