sarah is...all over the place: back from the north

...and almost leaving again!

got back from rovaniemi on friday night already, but couldn't be bothered to update this before. rather spent my weekend relaxing with family & friends...and doing laundry haha!

during the trip i didn't have the time anymore to update here...or sometimes i had time but no free internet. if i brought my laptop i would have had internet all the time in almost every hotel as all hotels in scandinavia seem to have free wireless internet. one hotel in harstad (NO) even had internet through the TV, but when i found that out around 22:00ish at night i didn't want to pay the 95 NOK to use that for 24 hours anymore...considering we were leaving early the next morning again.

anyway...back to the trip. after my last blog from sørkjosen we continued to the 'paris of the north' tromsø the next day. a day that would last forever in my opinion....it all started when we arrived at the hotel (note: a radisson sas hotel, not a small local one or whatever) around 14:30 as agreed on the phone 2 days earliers. we could store our luggage in the storage room as we had to leave again soon to visit the polar museum. when asking if the guests could pick up their keys after returning from the museum i got a 'i don't know' from the reception...and then a 'the rooms are probably not ready by 17:00 yet' ....excuse me?!?! and indeed...when returning to the hotel at 17:00 (after the museum & a visit to the hurtigruten boat) about half of the rooms for my guests were not cleaned yet! their excuse was that they'd just had a big conference and the midsummer night marathon the previous night...but that's no excuse of course.
i stood next to the receptionist for about 1 1/2 hours to make sure she kept on checking if more rooms where ready yet. obviously it wasn't her fault but something was really wrong with the cleaning staff!
finally at 18:45 my last guest got her keys and i could go to my room as well...to return to the restaurant for dinner almost immediately. i asked (well demanded in a nice friendly way actually) the receptionist if my guests at least could get a free drink at dinner to make up a little but for all this mess-up...and talking to the manager they could...so i finally had something nice to tell my guests and they seemed pretty happy with that!
there was also another dutch group in this hotel, from the OAD organisation, they were doing almost the same trip but the other way round haha! ilka and i had dinner with the dutch travelguide tineke and swedish driver from this group, it was a nice mish-mash of dutch-finnish-swedish-english around the table. it was good talking to another travelguide, exchanging information and be able to complain a bit about the complaining guests and about the hotel of course!
the day was not over yet...when going for a smoke outside (not me, not me ;)) with tineke later in the evening we found a very stressed ilka there, who said he was waiting for the police! turned out he went to check on his bus and found it's door open...someone had broken the lock and been in the bus...ilka's work mobile phone was stolen (it wasn't even in sight so they obviously were looking for something like this) and there was some light damage at a locker near the driver's seat. luckily there was no luggage from guests in the bus anymore, so nothing more was stolen. ilka was more upset about the broken lock than about his mobile i think...he also had 2 other phones with him (typical finnish i guess to have 3 phones, all nokia's too of course) so that was indeed not the biggest problem. i followed ilka and the police to the bus as ilka wanted me to help him make clear what happened in case the police couldn't follow his english. indeed these tromsø policemen (well woman & man) didn't speek too much english so my swedish was necessary sometimes. they had a proper look, also at the other busses parked there (ours was the only one that they had forced the door open from) and made a report. they then drove ilka to a petrol station to see if they had a new lock there.

the next morning ilka did have a new lock thank god, but both him & me hadn't slept very good at all. when announcing all what had happened in the bus and asking the guests to be extra nice to ilka today because of this the not cleaned rooms from the day before were soon forgotten, especially since i also added that i'd call SRC today to tell them about this mess in the hotel i think. the atmosphere in the bus was quite good and relaxed again from then on.

today, day 6, we went to the vesterålen islands. an island group just north of the famous lofoten and very similar to the lofoten islands as well. when we arrived at our hotel late in the afternoon everyone was very relieved the check-in went without any problems...me most of all!
after the check-in we went to visit the trondenes church just north of harstad. a lovely norwegian lady told us everything about this church which dates back to the 13th century...well worth the visit!

the next day it was time for the lofoten islands! after another ferry trip & drive on the first lofoten island we visited we arrived in the small but lovely fishemen's town henningsvaer for luch. a long lunch as our guided tour at the vikingmuseum lofotr was a bit later than i had wanted it to be. thank GOD the weather was lovely this afternoon and everybody seemed to love spending some time out in the sun enjoying the beautiful scenery :D
lofotr was nice, those vikings surely had big houses haha! we spent the night in svolvaer where we could actually see the famous svolvaergeita rock from the hotel. this (high!) rock has two peaks and some climbers like to jump from one peak to another (yikes!). i actually made a photo of it later at night and only realized later that there's two people standing on the peaks of the rock!

the next morning it was time for our longest ferry trip during this trip, 2 hours from svolvaer to hammarøy. another short ferry after that and we were on our way to narvik...in the rain!
was still glad it was raining today and not the day before, but in narvik a trip on the fjell-heisen (up 700m!) was planned...which i had to cancel now because we wouldn't be able to see something because of all the rain and fog! instead i proposed a visit to the war museum in narvik, but this caused protest by some people, as they 'had seen enough war in their lives already'. in the end a compromise was made, about half of the group did want to go to the war museum and the other half got some more time in the shopping centre in narvik.
the war museum was impressive, narvik had been bombed by the germans in the 2nd world war after a long battle with the english, russian and some polish in the mountains and fjords around the town.
from narvik we continued to sweden later in the afternoon, when passing the border it actually got more and more foggy...quite a mysterious sight on northern sweden we got there!
we arrived at our hotel in kiruna early in the evening...a scandic hotel, quite a familiar chain of hotels to me haha, and it was one of the best (if not the best) hotels of all during this trip in my humble opinion. felt at home immediately especially since they had daim cake for dessert! :D
in the evening the weather was actually quite good, so after the NL-argentina game i went for a walk around town...sun was still shining this late anyway. found some of my guests on the big balcony on the 5th floor of the hotel later on, enjoying the midnight sun, so did i...lovely!

the next morning, day 9 already!, we left for finland but not before we visited two churches (kiruna kyrka and an old sami church in jukkasjärvi, famous for its ice hotel) haha! at the church in kiruna i planned a short photostop only, as the church would still be closed...but then someone saw us and opened the church doors especially for us...nice but the 10 minute visit took 20 minutes then all of a sudden, had a hard time getting everyone in the bus again...some people could spend 2 hours at a church i think. we stopped a for bit longer at the sami church later on, it was a lovely little church near the river.
we then continued our drive and had a 'coffee' break at the river, 'coffee' as in; there was no coffee place there so i had asked the guests to take their own drink. it was a really nice place, but unfortunately it was raining again and within 5 minutes the mosquitos had discovered us!
so we didn't stay there for too long, still took at least 200 mosquitos with us in the bus, but they all died soon after everybody took out their anti-mosquito stuff...nice smell in the bus after this lol!
early in the afternoon we passed the border in swedish-finnish twin-town pello. we had a nice lunch break on the finnnish side, there was a beautiful café there from where you have a view on the other side of the river, so sweden. there were also some very good souvenirshops so the guests took their chance and bought stuff like elk/reindeer shirts for their grandchildren, postcards and reindeer meat. i actually got a can of reindeer meat for free from one of the shops...nice being a travelguide eh?!
from pello it was just another hour to our hotel in rovaniemi, it was same hotel as our first night there so everyone knew what to expect and there were no problems with the check-in and/or dinner at all.
at night i watched some tv, ER with finnish subtitles is funny, football with finnish commentators as well (kutsi-kutsi = 1-1 :P). went to the roof terrace of the hotel just before 00:00 to see the sun still bright and shining, right before a big cloud ruined the midnight sun view.

next morning we went to the arktikum museum in rovaniemi, very impressive building (a long tunnel of glass) and an almost even more impressive exhibition about the sami way of living from then to now, the sami clothing and music (jojk), the animals that live in the north and also a part about rovaniemi (bombed in wwII just as narvik). all the guests kept telling me what a wonderful museum this was and how nice it was to do something like this on the last morning instead of just waiting to go to the airport.
after this visit we were going to leave for the airport, but not before one of the guests held a speech (in form of a poem), first one for ilka and then one for me...followed by handing over well filled envelopes to us :D
after thank you's from ilka and me and ilka counting all the people in the buss this last time (in finnish :P) we now headed for the airport where we all said goodbye to ilka. i'm going to do this trip with him again in the end of july so for us it was more a 'see you next month'-goodbye.
check-in at rovaniemi airport went sloooow, but there were only 2 people working behind the desk (think i've seen 8 people working at this airport in total) and we had a lot of time so nobody really cared.
14.10 we took off in a brand new HUGE boeing (aircraft is going to be used to fly to japan but they were testing it on some domestic flights now) in the direction of helsinki. had to wait a bit for our next flight in helsinki, and then we arrived in amsterdam 18:10 dutch time.
was one of the first to arrive at the luggage belt and started to say my goodbyes to everyone there...got some hugs and kisses from the older ladies, sweet! when i was sure i had said goodbye to everyone i left the arrival hall and went to take my train home...the end of my first trip as a travelguide!!!

am at work at uni this week, but leaving again on thursday, for stockholm this time! from thursday to monday i'm doing a city trip there, for 15 guests only. when they leave again on monday afternoon i'm off until wednesday when the new group (29 guests) for the 'stockholm and south-norway' trip arrives which is going to take 10 days. will be flying home from oslo on july 14th.
my day off in stockholm is going to be great, not only because i'm having a free day in stockholm (always good!) but also because i won't be alone.... :D

more pix from my trip: