Rocking in Europe: Northern Lights Hunt Vol. 1 / Tromsø

Seeing the northern lights is also on my bucket list, so I bought tickets to Tromsø, apparently the best place to see them.

We flew Norwegian Cph - Oslo, Oslo - Tromsø.

Weather was unfortunately not too good for our 3 days there, with rain and snow. We had booked way in advance so it was not really possible to check the forecast for the set time, but it is the norm by the Aric Ocean.

We had saved our Aurora tour for the last night of our stay, with the intention to then sleep in a bit and then head to the airport.

The town of Tromsø is quite charming, with old colourful historic houses, with some incredibly ugly new buildings that left us wondering how that is even legal.

We visited the Arctic Museum, 40 NOK, so very cheap. I liked the historic part with adventurers exploring the arctic, but liked much less the long history of seal clubbing, which was a big visual part of the museum.

We visited Polaria, a sort of aquarium with local fish and saw 4 cute chubby seals being trained and fed. It was quite nice to see but 180 NOK was a bit overpriced.

On the last day we also visited Macks Brewery. I was drawn by the fact that is the northern most brewery in the world. Turns out that what we visited used to be the brewery, but is now moved to the main land. Tour lady was really nice but we felt ripped off. Also, because of the incredibly strict alcohol laws in Norway, the beer tasting was a small glass of their cheaper average beer.

Everything alcohol related in Norway is a guaranteed wallet drain

For 2 days we kept track of the weather conditions and aurora activity, wandering if we were going to see anything. At 7 pm we got the tour meeting point, and the guide too us that chances that night were small, but if we wanted to jump off the bus, we would get a full refund. We all decided to get along for the ride.

I am not usually big on organized tours, but this would greatly increase our chances .

Our tour guide Sebastian was truly amazing, a colombian you guy with an obsession for norther nights.

He decided to drive 2 hours north of Tromsø, the only place it was not snowing.

When we reached the spot, we had to wait a bit for the light activity to start. We got hot dogs and marshmallows , which Mama Sara, the driver, made sure we all got and no one would go home hungry!

The sky was clouded so we could not see anything, at least with the naked eye. Sebastian took photos of the sky, and we could all see there was a lot of activity behind the clouds.

A little opening in the clouds happened twice that night, so we definitely saw a green stripe in the sky, but nothing spectacular like in photos. A great experience , but I am calling this Vol. 1, because I'll go after them again in the future.

The tour was awesome, Sebastian really made an effort to make us happy, and stopped multiple times on the way back to track activity. I highly recommend Polar Adventure for this.

It was then time to head home, loving every second of our short trip.

I will for sure go back in summer, for some fjord hiking.