on the way back south, we visited tromsø for a second time. there, we attended a concert in the ishavskatedralen:

the next day, we had the chance of exploring the vesterålen island by bus. we first visited the trondenes church, where also the weather began to get worse: it started snowing. and later, hailing. both with a lot of wind, and sometimes pretty much horizontally. the island is really beautiful, eventually we have to go back and explore the nature in more detail. some hours later, we arrived in stokmarknes, where we had a chance to visit the hurtigruten museum. part of the museum is the complete ms finnmarken, parts of which can be freely explored. below, you can also find a photo from its bridge.

the next day we again crossed the arctic circle, this time southbound.

again one day later, we visited the (surprisingly) beautiful town of rørvik. it is quite a nice little town, with some quite beautiful places:

from rørvik we proceeded south, straight to bergen.

the next day, we left the ship early to explore harstad a little, a small town on the vesterålen island. there, we finally had a lot of signs of winter: icy roads. while the snow itself was mostly gone, all the melting and freezing created an icy cover of especially the side roads (the main roads were mostly clear). in harstad, we also met another hurtigruten ship, the ms polarlys.

while leaving harstad, we saw the grytøya mountains, covered in snow; you can see them on the right in the first panorama. the second panorama shows the southern part of senja with lemmingvær covering the right front side.

from vesterålen, we proceeded to our next big stop, tromsø. while approaching tromsø from the south, we came accross kvaløya, an island west of tromsøya we’ve been driving on last year. here is a photo of the coastline:

in tromsø, we took the chance to take the fjellheisen cable car up to the storsteinen. last year, the cable car didn’t operate due to a mechanical problem. up there, there was enough snow (and ice!) and we had a really good view over tromsøya, tromsø and the surrounding mountain ranges:

the next day we crossed the arctic circle. despite being in the far north, there still weren’t too many signs of winter, except a bit of snow higher up. nonetheless, with beautiful weather, it was really beautiful.

during the afternoon we visited bodø, the capital of nordland:

we also visited bodø’s railway station, being the end of the line: to get further north, one has to take the bus (or boat or plane).

finally, another shot of our boat:

this day, i also had the chance to photograph the sun diving into the ocean:

later the evening, we visited svolvær, the capital of the lofoten islands. there, we visited the magic ice ice exhibition:

the third night in a row there was an announcement of northern lights being visible. this time, there actually was something to see. still not as bright as i’ve seen it before, but beautiful nonetheless: