Today we were invited for a boat trip in a beautiful wooden boat, large enough to fit 6 people and 2 dogs and a lot of fishing gear… It wasn’t the ideal day though, the rain came pouring down and we didn’t catch anything except one cod too small too keep. Oh well, afterwards we sat in the kitchen by the fire with a warm mug of tea, and home made cookies, cake and bread… 🙂
Oh Summer, where art thou? 😛
Yesterday we had quite a special show in Tromsø: an eclipse of the midnight sun! For a while, it looked like clouds would spoil the show though. Even an hour before it started, I was contemplating staying at home as it looked hopeless. But we decided to try our luck, and go up the cable car anyway. Eelke and Roy joined us, and we brought a picknick blanket, warm drinks and chocolate. When we got to the top of the cable car, it was actually raining… Not long after some sunbeams starting to appear, and we got a bit more optimistic. Within half an hour, the sky cleared up more than enough to be able to watch the eclipse, how lucky!!
Paul had brought his welding helmet to be able to look at the sun – it worked brilliantly! I brought a dvd which also worked fine.
At 22:45 we noticed a small “bite” out of the sun, which quickly grew bigger as the moon moved in front of the sun. It’s quite hard to get good photos, you have to underexpose so much that you can’t have much foreground in the images. I also tried taking a photo through the welding helmet, which worked quite well!
At 23:30, the eclipse was at its maximum. With the naked eye, it was hard to see anything. You could kind of notice – out of the corner of your eye – that a patch of the sun was missing, but I didn’t notice it got darker. The sun is of course quite low around midnight and the light is very soft and yellow anyway. The photo on the left (below) is very unrealistic, with a halo caused by my lens or the filter, and a “second” sun upside down underneath the sun – but I think it made quite a spectacular image 😀
Just before midnight, the southbound Hurtigruten arrives in Tromsø. They must have had a nice view too 🙂
There were lots of people watching the eclipse, both locals and tourists. There were actually quite a lot of Dutch people up there, and one older couple started talking to us. They were on a long holiday in Norway and had just been to the North Cape. They offered to take our photo, it turned out really nice 🙂
The cable car stayed open until 2:00, an hour longer than usual. We spent a pleasant hour sitting in the cafe enjoying the view with a warm drink. What a night! 😀
The midnight sun is back! I love this season 🙂 Last Sunday, we took the cable car up at 22:30. The cable car now runs until 1:00 in the morning so that people can see the midnight sun from there. What a view! This panorama is taken at about 23:00.
The weather was very calm and warm enough to sit down and enjoy the midnight sun with some chocolate and a cup of tea 🙂 The snow is slowly disappearing, but we still had to cross large patches and at times I sank into the snow until my knees! Not long though until I can go hiking… Ti pÃ¥ Topp is starting on Sunday, can’t wait!
The photos below are taken around midnight. I thought the sun might disappear behind the mountains, but it didn’t 🙂
We took the last cable car down at 1:00, what a magical evening! I’ll probably come back next week to watch something very special – a solar eclipse at midnight!! Fingers crossed for clear skies 🙂