Hanneke – Page 79 – Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

A hundred shades of grey

02/11/2010 Hanneke

Two weeks ago, I took a mini “cruise” from Tromsø to Kirkenes and back, on board the MS Lofoten. The Hurtigruten company runs ships from Bergen to Kirkenes and back, with one ship leaving Bergen every day (total journey time for the round trip is 11 days). They stop in Tromsø both ways, and this means the Hurtigruten becomes a part of daily life in a way. For example, it blows its horn loudly every time it arrives in the afternoon and you can hear it from nearly everywhere in town. When I hear that, I know it’s 14:30 and I can sometimes even recognize which ship is coming in 😀 It stays for 4 hours and it’s quite easy to recognize tourists from the ship when you’re in the town centre 😉 The southbound one comes in just before midnight and doesn’t stay very long, but if I work the night shift it passes the south tip of the island just when I am on the roof to observe, and I love watching the ship (all lit up) sail into the dark night.

Anyway… I found out they had a special discount on tickets between Kirkenes and Tromsø. It’s a part of Norway that I don’t know very well, and was curious to see. It would also be good for work, as this is one of the areas we write forecasts for – much easier when you have some local knowledge 🙂 Paul couldn’t come because of work, he wasn’t very keen either after nearly a month at sea in September :D. So on a rainy Saturday evening, I boarded the MS Lofoten on my own. Below is a photo of the ship, and a map of the route it took.

I knew it was risky taking this trip in October, and indeed I didn’t have very nice weather. The ship left Tromsø in the dark, and by the time I got up the next morning, we had just left Hammerfest. I spent some time on deck looking at the landscape, discovering how many shades of grey exist 😀 Grey sky, grey mountains, grey(ish) snow, grey wind turbines… Still, the landscapes were quite impressive!

This part of Norway is called Finnmark. It’s bigger than the Netherlands – but has a population of only 72,000 people. I did know this, but it’s hard to imagine such a big area with so few people in it. I never realised just how small all the towns in Finnmark are… honestly, I don’t think I could live there, much too isolated. Tromsø has 67,000 people and I already wish it was bigger sometimes 😛 The ship visits all “major” towns/villages along the coast, some of which are tiny – like Havøysund in the first photo below – only about 1100 people live there. In those small places, the ship only stops for 15 minutes, to deliver cargo or receive goods, and people can get on and off as well. The Hurtigruten was originally set up as a postal service, and it obviously still hasn’t lost this function completely – of course it doesn’t take the actual mail anymore (that’s taken over by planes), but it does deliver a lot of bulkier things like building materials and car tires :D. It makes the Hurtigruten a mix of partly ferry, partly cargo ship, partly cruise ship. Lots of tourists do the full 11 day trip, or at least one way. Locals use it more as a ferry, often getting off at the next stop. I quite like this mix, I don’t think I would enjoy a “proper” cruise.

Just before noon, we arrived in Honningsvåg, and the sun came out – what a nice surprise! This was one of the longer stops (3.5 hours), mainly because they organize an excursion to the North Cape from here. I was more interested in seeing Honningsvåg itself, so I skipped the (expensive) excursion and walked around town. It was Sunday and very quiet. I enjoyed walking around the docks, and I even met this cute little creature running around the shore. I first thought it was an otter (though it was much smaller than the ones I’ve seen before), but after looking it up, it must have been a mink.

I also walked around a place where they stored LOTS of fishing float balls, and where they also had all kinds of colourful roles of rope – a paradise for a photographer 😀

I walked up to a viewpoint over the town. Honningsvåg is a small (pop. 2400) and quiet place (at least on Sunday), but it does have everything you might need (even a cinema and several cafes) and I really enjoyed my visit 🙂

We left Honningsvåg at 15:15, and our next stop was Kjøllefjord at 17:30. It was almost dark by the time we got there, but we were just about able to see the impressive rock formation called “Finnkirka”, shaped in the form of a church. The day after I came back from my cruise, they installed flood lights on the formation, pity I didn’t get to see that.

In spite of the cloudy/rainy weather we had most of the day, it cleared up at night and we saw beautiful northern lights. It was very special to see them from the ship, in complete darkness and with a clear view of the horizon in all directions – magical! I tried to take photos, but the waves were too big to keep the camera steady 😀

The next morning we arrived in Kirkenes. I had been there before (on our way to Murmansk), and there isn’t much to see anyway – so it was quite a boring visit, especially since the weather was particularly bad when we were there. I looked around the shops for a bit and used the internet in the library ;). This is the final destination of the ship, and from here we turned back. That afternoon, we stopped for about an hour in Vardø. What a nice little place! It’s located on an island out in the sea. It really feels quite remote, but cosy and comfortable at the same time. This was my favourite stop on the cruise – perhaps slightly influenced by the amazing mobile bakery I managed to find 😛

That night, the skies cleared, and again we had a great northern lights show! This time the sea was very calm and I tried to take some photos. It doesn’t work very well (they become quite grainy and blurred), but it gives you an impression anyway 🙂

The next morning we stopped in Hammerfest for 1.5 hours. First we passed the Snøhvit project on the island of Melkøya – an enormous installation that collects natural gas from the Barents Sea. Hammerfest is very proud of this installation, and no doubt it created a lot of jobs and money… They claim it’s environment-friendly… I guess that depends how you look at it!

I thought Hammerfest would be one of the highlights of the cruise, but I didn’t really like it. I guess the bad weather didn’t help much, and the entire city centre seemed to be under construction (with the main street turned into a muddy mess). It’s also a strange mix of modern and more traditional buildings. None of the buildings are very old though -Hammerfest was completely destroyed at the end of WWII.

The ship arrived back in Tromsø late that evening. I travelled more than 1600 km in just over 3 days! All in all, it was an interesting trip and I really enjoyed it 🙂 The MS Lofoten is small and cosy, I much prefer that over the newer (massive) ships. There were only about 50 passengers on board, and it’s nice how you get to know people after a few days 🙂 I’m quite keen to take the Hurtigruten south as well (to Trondheim, or perhaps all the way to Bergen) one day, but perhaps in a better season 😉

Liquid Apfelstrudel

31/10/2010 Hanneke

We went for a walk today, following the road/path that leads to the top of Kjølen. Winter has come early this year, we’ve had the first snow a few weeks ago. It keeps melting away though, so we weren’t sure what the snow conditions higher up would be like. At first, the snow wasn’t very deep and the path had been used by many others.

The road leads to a couple of lakes that are used as a source of drinking water. From there, we followed a path marked by poles. Nobody else had taken the path though, and the snow was much deeper this high up (400 m), so we put our snowshoes on. I finally bought myself a “real” pair of snowshoes. We both have a pair of army snowshoes – much cheaper, but they are made for big army guys 😉 and way too wide for me. I was very keen to try my new ones! For those interested, I bought the Atlas Electra 12. They are brilliant; really easy to put on (even with my large mittens), lightweight, and very comfortable.

At the shore of one of the lakes, we found these frost flowers growing on top of the ice. So pretty!

You might wonder why I gave this blog such a strange title 😀 We usually take a thermos with a hot drink with us… but today we were out of all the drinks we like to bring. I went trough the kitchen cupboards to see if I could find anything else suitable. I found a box of “Lämmin Kuppi Omena-Kaneli” which we bought in Finland, mainly out of curiosity as it looked like some kind of apple cinnamon soup. It was exactly that, but what we thought were croutons were actually small bits of apple like you find in apfelstrudels. It was quite amusing to experience liquid apfelstrudel 😀 but very yummy!!

We didn’t continue all the way to the top of Kjølen, as it was getting dark. We are losing daylight very fast now, by the end of November the sun will set for 2 months! On the way back down, we had a beautiful view of Tromsø island in the evening light….

Crete

20/10/2010 Hanneke

We spent the first week of October in Crete, to catch some last sunshine before the dark and cold time starts there – and actually have a week of SUMMER which we hadn’t had this year! We chose Crete because there is a direct (charter) flight to Chania from Tromsø. The flight time is about 5 hours. I left my gps on during both legs of the flights, so you can see our route below 🙂

We rented a car, as our accommodation was at the other side of the island. It took quite a lot of time searching the internet before we found something we liked. Most of the accommodation on Crete is in big blocks next to the beach, and we wanted something more private and less touristy. We found a cottage called Sarich Cottage. It was located in the east of Crete, in a very small village. It took about 4 hours to drive there from the airport. Here are some photos of the cottage (which Paul refused to call “cottage” as it didn’t have a thatched roof…)

The next morning we drove to a nearby beach and sat in the shade underneath a tree enjoying the view and the warm temperatures.

We also visited a really nice village on the sea, called Mochlos. It’s very small, but it has many tavernas right on the waterfront. We ate there a couple of times, a great place! The second photo shows the view as we drove up from the village. Olive trees everywhere!

We drove a dirt road into the mountains, stopping at a very old olive tree – claimed to be more than 3000 years old! Very impressive.

A bit further up we decided the road was getting too difficult to drive, and we went for a walk. Nice views! The white flowers were everywhere, not sure what they are, but they are pretty. We watched the sunset from the top of the hill, and suddenly we felt the earth move quite clearly. Not violently, and no rocks started rolling or anything, but it still was a strange feeling to feel the hill move back and forth. We later found out it was a 5.0 earthquake in the sea not far from where we were.

We walked around Pachia Ammos, the village on the beach closest to our cottage. It was a very windy day, and the waves were crashing on this little pier.

The next day we explored the south coast. We had both bought snorkelling gear, which we were eager to try out. We found a nice little beach and had fun snorkelling. The beach was right underneath a monestary (Moni Kapsa) overlooking a gorge called Perivolakia gorge. We decided to go for a walk in the gorge. There are a lot of gorges on Crete! This one was really beautiful, steep rock walls glowing orange in the evening sun.

There were some goats walking around, and lots of caves. Paul climbed up to one of the caves; he said you could smell the goats use them as shelter ;). We walked quite deep into the gorge, and at some point you could smell wild thyme – so nice! It’s possible to walk all the way to the other side and come out in a village at an altitude of 500 m, but this takes several hours and not sure how to arrange transport back, so we turned around and went back to the car.

This is the view from the beach where we went swimming, towards the monastery and (on the left) the entrance to the gorge.

The next day we went to Elounda, because we had read this is a great place to go snorkelling. There are ruins of a “sunken city” which sounded very exciting. On our way to that place, I took this photo. Paul thought I was being mean taking a photo but this couple just made me giggle… each to their own, but not my idea of the perfect holiday 😀

The “sunken city” was not as excited as we were hoping for – mostly piles of rocks under water. We did see nice fish though. Afterwards we drove to another village (Plaka), from where there were lots of boat trips available to Spinalonga island. We didn’t go on any tours, just walked around and enjoyed a nice ice cream.

There were some nice shops there too!

What I loved most about our holiday was being able to eat outside for every meal. I was usually up before Paul, and took a book and a croissant to a comfy spot on the terrace. I was never alone though, there’s always company – cats! There are a LOT of them, and they are stray cats though they look like they are taken care of and fed quite well. I love cats, so I didn’t mind the company 🙂 There are stray dogs too, but luckily not as many – I am a cat person and definitely not a dog person, they scare me.
Paul enjoyed eating pomegranates, they grow them a lot on Crete so he didn’t have to buy them – even in our garden there was a pomegranate tree.

We drove to the mountains, to a plateau (Katharo plateau) at 1100 m altitude. Quite impressive to drive up so high in the mountains, through more or less deserted landscape, until you suddenly come to a fertile plateau with lots of farms. We stopped at a big tree to have a break in the shade.

There was also a taverna there, where we had some fresh orange juice, and traditional yoghurt with honey – very nice!

On the way down we stopped and followed a path leading to a cave. It wasn’t a very deep one, but I had never before visited a cave that you can enter by yourself 😉 and was quite impressed.

We stopped at Kritsa, a nice village on the way down to the coast.

It was built on the hillside and it was a maze of narrow streets, fun to explore! There were also a lot of shops selling cloth, which was the speciality of this village. I really enjoyed visiting this village, as it didn’t seem so crazy touristy as most of the places on the coast (even though this village is a tourist attraction too).

We made a day trip to Vai, supposedly the only palm beach in Europe, on the eastern most part of Crete. Unfortunately we chose the only rainy day during our stay in Crete for this trip! The beach was beautiful, and the snorkelling was really great there.

While we were snorkelling, the rain turned into a proper thunderstorm with very heavy rain. We decided we might as well stay in the water, while everybody else was leaving the beach as fast as they could. We thought it wouldn’t last that long, but it did… So in the end we did come out of the water, to find our bag on the beach half soaked. Try to change clothes while it’s raining heavily… we thought we could use the changing rooms, but it turned out everybody had left the beach, including the shop/cafe owners, and they had locked all the toilets and changing rooms :|. In the end we waited for the rain to stop while in the car with the blowers on 😀 When the rain stopped, we went for a walk around the palm forest. It’s quite big, but unfortunately you can’t walk through the forest as they are trying to protect the palms.

On our last day before leaving, we decided it was time to explore the village we had been staying in 😀 It’s called Vasiliki, and it only has about 150 inhabitants – of which I estimate the average age is somewhere around 80 😀 We ended up walking in the mountains, to a viewpoint where you can see both the sea on the east side and on the south side. This is the view walking up…

It was a nice walk, and we also saw a big bird of prey from the top. It was too far away to see what it was – they have vultures here which I would have liked to see!

In the evening we went to our favourite beach for a last swim. It was another windy day and the waves were huge. I wonder whether it’s just always that windy on Crete or whether it was coincidence? I’m not complaining though, it kept the heat tolerable. We watched the sunset from the deserted beach, it was wonderful to watch the waves crash on the beach.

Our last day was spent driving back to Chania for our flight back, but we stopped in Knossos on the way. I think we picked the perfect day to visit – there weren’t many visitors and it was cool weather. I never took Greek in school so I didn’t know much about Knossos and the myths attached to it, but it was really interesting to see the ruins and learn more. Knossos is the site of a palace that was built from about 1700 BC! The archaeologist who dug it up tried to rebuilt part of the palace himself, as he thought it would have looked like. Of course you can question whether that is scientifically the correct thing to do 😉 but it was very pretty and you got a better idea of what the castle might have looked like. It must have been an amazing place back then… An interesting visit!

It was sad to have our trip come to an end… we really enjoyed the relaxing week, all the swimming and the great meals outside. Having a week of holiday (and summer!) after Paul’s cruise and before the winter starts was a great idea, we might do it again next year 🙂

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Author: Hanneke