Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

Last Saturday the weather forecast was looking good. The days before we had a lot of snow, so we decided to get up early and go snowshoeing. We started before sunrise, which is not that difficult when sunrise is at 10:20! At this time of year, the sky often has very beautiful pastel colours, like the pink in the photos below – I call them “Arctic skies” as I have never seen them anywhere else 🙂

Apart from 2 people very close to where we parked the car, we didn’t meet anyone else all day. We did see a herd of about 100 reindeer though! Unfortunately they were too far away for a photo. We couldn’t go very far, as they days are very short now and sunset was at 12:40 – so less than 2.5 hours of daylight! Below you can see the photographer at work, and the resulting photo 😉

Paul climbed on top of this huge boulder…

Since it’s so early in the season, the rivers and lakes are not fully frozen yet. Luckily we found a bridge over the river that crosses this valley!

Here you can see the same river lower down in the valley. I love the boulders all covered in snow!

We played around taking photos for a while, until it got too dark and we had to go back to the car.

It was a fun day! We got back to the car by 14:00 when it was getting dark already. The good thing about this is that you still have time to do some other things, like going to the shops (they all close really early on saturdays).

Below is a photo taken after sunset last Sunday… beautiful! The other photo is the hammock -or rather hanging chair – that we bought in Amsterdam (in an amazing shop called Maranon). I’ve always wanted to have one, and now we finally have a flat where it fits perfectly. It’s REALLY comfy, I could sleep in it 🙂

Yesterday we gave a “winter warmer party” in our flat. We made mulled wine, mince pies and even pepernoten (Dutch biscuits) – it was fun! And it truly was a “warming” party – with the fire burning and so many people in the room it got to 25 degrees!

Today is the last day that the sun comes above the horizon, so no more daylight from now on… There’s still twilight though, and endless sunsets 🙂

Some people asked me for photos of the snow in Tromsø – here they are! The first photo is taken from our balcony and shows the last bit of daylight – at 13:30!! Only a few more days until the sun will not come above the horizon, and it will stay like that for 2 months.

I was in Tromsø for 10 days, and mostly had non-stop rain! Last weekend we did not even venture out of the flat, except to go to the cinema on Sunday evening. I do like rainy days, but it was getting a bit much… then on my last day in Tromsø we woke up to sunny skies! My flight was in the late afternoon, so we had time to go for a walk around Prestvannet, the lake on top of Tromsø island. It was beautiful with the autumn colours and the reflections in the lake! Tromsdalstinden is now covered in snow, and even the lower mountains have a dusting of snow on top…

There were a lot of young seagulls around the lake – I tried to capture their reflections when they were landing on the water…

We walked all around the lake and really enjoyed the sunshine. We weren’t the only ones, we met lots of other people out for a walk with their camera’s!

And a last photo of us before another goodbye at the airport…

It was a bit easier this time because it won’t be long – we are meeting up in the Netherlands next week! We’ll be there for a week, then we both fly to London and stay in the UK for 10 days. I’m really looking forward to it!

But the best ticket I bought lately is a London – Tromsø one for early January – when I’m finally coming to Tromsø to STAY 🙂