Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

Last week we had beautiful weather; not a cloud in sight for several days. I was working quite a lot of shifts, but one afternoon I decided to take the long way to work to enjoy the sunshine and take some photos. The yellow house in the photo below (as well as all the other buildings in the photo) belongs to the open air museum at the south tip of Tromsø island. It’s a collection of buildings “rescued” from places all around the area and moved to the museum. The museum is only open for a couple of hours on sundays in the summer season, and even then you can only really visit 2 buildings. Still, the buildings are very pretty. The panorama is taken on my way up the hill, looking back at the fjord and the only farm area on Tromsø island.

We had quite a lot of new snow the week before… though this person probably hasn’t cleared his car for the whole winter. As the streets are cleared by snowploughs, the piles of snow directly next to the road can become very high. Some traffic signs get buried, as do some of the bus stands – at this one you’ll have to dig if you want to read the time table 😀

I worked a late shift that day, and at about 22:00, the most amazing northern lights appeared. I watched from the roof of the institute for a bit, hoping it would last for a while so I could take some photos after work. At 23:00, I was done with work, but the northern lights had also disappeared. I decided to take a chance and drive to a dark place anyway. Well, “dark”, that was actually impossible to find as the moonlight was incredibly bright that night! I drove into a valley which is not very populated. The road leads to a ferry that had stopped for the night, so there was hardly any traffic. It was so beautiful in the moonlight… I stopped to take some photos, hoping the northern lights would reappear. Unfortunately, they never did, but I didn’t regret going as it was beautiful nonetheless.

I had the next day off, and convinced Paul to take a day off too. We drove to Nordkjosbotn, about an hour inland from Tromsø. We saw this majestic eagle on the sea ice of one of the fjords…

We went snowshoeing in a valley, enjoying the sunshine. The wind was very strong, so we opted for a sheltered valley instead of a windy mountain top. We watched the sun go down 🙂

And the moon rise… In this photo you can also see how windy it is higher up in the mountains – lots of snow blowing from the top!

We had dinner at Nordkjosbotn, and waited for the darkness to come. We found a nice beach where we waited for the northern lights to appear… this time we were lucky! They weren’t very active, this band stayed in the same place all evening. It was very dim most of the time (also having to compete with the bright moonlight), but at times it would become brighter.

With the bright moonlight, we also took a self portrait 🙂 and one of our shadows to show just how sharp they were. I kept looking behind me for some bright street lamp which wasn’t there 😀

It was a beautiful week… and we ended it by going to Senja for the weekend. I have lots of photos of that trip, now I only have to find the time to post them here 🙂 stay tuned!

Last night we had a beautiful aurora show, which lasted for quite a long time. This enabled me to try something I’ve been meaning to try for a long time – a timelapse of the aurora! The video is only about 40 seconds, but covers 1.5 hour in reality 🙂

At some point the aurora became really weak, and Paul was keen to go home. I told him, “nope, I would like a grand finale to my video!”. I hadn’t finished my sentence when the aurora was suddenly very bright and dancing all over the sky… so magical! I often try to make the aurora come out, but this was the first time I succeeded 😛

We started our Saturday with a walk at Telegrafbukta. It was about 12:30 and the sun was setting. We are now officially in “mørketid” – the dark time, but as you can see the sky still gets light and the colours are very pretty!

After our walk, we cycled to the city centre to have a look around the shops. I knew the Christmas lights had been put up, so I brought my camera to get some pictures. Tromsø is so pretty at Christmas time 🙂

In the evening, I was hoping for some northern lights activity. Although the forecast wasn’t looking too promising, at least the skies were clear! I kept an eye on the webcam, which is very convenient if you don’t want to stand outside (freezing!) all night. At first a faint green glow appeared on the horizon, but then just before 20:00, it exploded across the whole sky! We quickly grabbed warm clothes, camera gear, and a thermos of hot chocolate and jumped in the car. The photos below are taken along Ersfjorden. The lights were dancing all over the sky, it was hard to decide where to point the camera!

After a while, the activity died down, and we decided to drive a bit further. We took the road towards Sommarøy, which goes over a very dark mountain pass. The photos below are taken from there. The northern lights had become very diffuse, even though they were still filling the entire sky. On a long exposure (25 seconds) the green still comes out, but to the naked eye it did not have as much colour. While I took the panorama below, some more active northern lights appeared on the horizon, but it didn’t last very long.

When the hot chocolate was finished, and our feet started to get cold, we decided it was time to go home. Click here to watch an animation of the northern lights last night (wait for the second half of the video) – quite impressive!