Northern Trip Days 4 and 5!

On day 4, Thursday, we woke up around 11 for a late breakfast. Most is us had had the first solid night sleep since we left Agder so people were in good spirits. Sondre texted us to meet at the White House for breakfast, and as you can imagine we were all a little confused. After searching a bit we found the so called White House and went inside to eat. 

From left to right we have Chance (North Carolina), Patricia (Philippines), and Yewon (South Korea) 

Noah (Georgia), William (Tahiti), Yhan (Texas), Liv (Alaska), Sondre (Norway), Helena (UK) is sitting right there but she’s a bit hidden behind Merete (Germany).

Around noon, we decided to take a walk up a mountain not far from where we were staying. There was a lot of snow, but it was really fun. Here’s some good pics. We went as far up as we could go while it was still light (It gets dark around 3:30) and then started back down. 

The way down was much more fun than the way up. There was so much snow and ice that we ended up just sliding on our butts. It was amazing. Later that night we had some lovely fish for dinner and saw a lot of northern lights! They were not super bright, but they show up nicely in pictures!

Marlene trying to get down off her bunk hehe

Marianne cut up way too many oranges for dessert so we ate quite a few in our cabin that evening

That night I went to bed after some drawing and watching a few episodes of a crappy reality TV show. The next morning we woke up to tons of snow, fog, and wind. 

Breakfast before we left! 

Our doorstep

We spent an hour or so packing up all of our stuff. This is when I discovered that I had lost two things. My AirPods and my only pair of pants. I had last used my AirPods on the last ship so I called them up and asked them to search. They hadn’t found anything but said they would look. I’m writing this post on Saturday evening and I sadly still haven’t found them. I will continue looking though! I had tied my pants around the banister outside our front door the night before to air them out a bit. They had been in a bag with my wet towel so they smelled like bad laundry. I only meant to leave them there for a few hours, but completely forgot they were there. I spent a good 20 minutes kicking around in the snow and finally found them frozen under the snow super far away from the cabin. Yay! After that we once again used our Tetris skills to fill up the van and went inside to each breakfast and make a packed lunch. We packed ourselves into the bus and drove Sondre to the airport where he would prepare to fly back to Kristiansand. He was just a stand in for Marianne while she finished her quarantine. Needless to say, he was very excited to go home and sleep in his bed🙄. Lucky. Anyways. We made our way very slowly back to Svolvær (Where Marianne picked us up two days earlier) so we could board another coastal ship. It took us a long time because of the whipping snow and ice covered roads. On our way into town we stopped at a Vikings museum stationed in themiddle of nowhere. It was interesting, but honestly we used it most for the good wifi haha. We had some matpakke (Packed lunch) and finished the drive into Svolvær. We had some time there to walk around and then we got some pizza from a nice little pizza place. After that we went to a small, absolutely packed museum before boarding our next ship. This one is called Polarlys which means polar lights in Norwegian. Here’s a pic of the outside. 

Here’s the snow in Svolvær and a Marlene for perspective 

Here is the path of the boat! We got on in Svolvær and are disembarking in Kirkenes.

I was pretty worried about getting seasick on the boat, especially because there was a lot of wind in the forecast for the next few days, and we would sometimes be sailing through open Norwegian waters. But I bought these wristbands that are supposed to prevent seasickness. And holy crap they work. I felt NOTHING! I slept amazingly and overall the ship has been a lovely experience! The only downside is that we are 3 people to a tiny little cabin room and it’s difficult to even move or stand up inside. I will include pictures in the next pose. Okay! More to come tomorrow or the next day! Thanks for reading :)