a blog from sunny tromsø!

no midnight sun at north cape this time either. it was far less foggy though when we arrived, so at least everyone could see the cliffs and the sea. our driver for the night was anders from hässleholm in skåne (sweden)! a bit weird that a skåning ends up there in the north...
when we drove back to honningsvåg around 1:30-1:45 we passed a shell gas station & about 6-8 reindeers were just laying there! of course we scared them away again, but it was still weird to see reindeers in the middle of a village.

yesterday we travelled from honningsvåg to sørkjosen, a lovely drive of almost 350 km. we saw loooads of reindeers on our way, one time we were almost 'forced' to have a fotostop because there was a group of at least 30 reindeers in front of us on the road...reindeers really are not the smartest animals they run away fast but don't really know in what direction they should go, so before you know they're in front of the bus again..which could be trouble, if you kill one you have to pay 4000 - 6000 NOK to the sami who owns it...
weather was great all day, for sure 22-24 degrees in the sun. we visited the alta museum on our way and had lunch there as well. on our way from alta to sørkjosen we had a photo-stop at gildetun / kvænangsfjellet...lovely view again over there!
then we arrived in sørkjosen and the receptionist there had a nice message... 'we have a bacterium in the tap water so people are not allowed to drink it or brush their teeth with it' ....nice! everyone got a bottle of water from the hotel, but that was only 0,5 ltr, only to brush your teeth. luckily there was also a kiosk on the other side of the street (keep in mind that the hotel and some houses is all there is in sørkjosen besides the kiosk)...but of course the guests were not happy at...all...to say the least...and also quite concerned about showering and the water used to prepare dinner... AND then the hotel is already not that special, most rooms are not very nice, everything looks old and the dinner is only so-so... well let's say i survived and the guests were in a much better mood at breakfast this morning, right before we left haha!

that this day started with a bright blue sky and sun above the mountains also helped a lot of course. we drove to olderdalen, photostop at the fjord on our way, where we took our first ferry for today...and then we took another one at svensby. both ferry trips are just lovely!
we arrived in tromsø early in the afternoon, we had lunch first and then we went to visit the ishavskatedralen (arctic cathedral), when we drove up there something under the bus said 'crack' , ilka knew what it was immediately...some part on the left bottom in the back of the buss was broken...and i have no idea what it's called in english! (in dutch = de vering)
everybody seem to know all about it, especially the men in the group of course. i started with getting everybody in the church and by the time i got back ilka had already called volvo here in tromsø and he could go there to get it fixed. 'luckily' the rest of the afternoon would be free time for ilka as after the church visit we'd go to the hotel, check-in and walk to the polar museum here in tromsø after which the guests could spend the rest of the afternoon themselves.
so we carefully drove back to the city centre where our hotel is, this time we could check in right away (yaay!) and then ilka went to the garage to get it fixed. haven't seen again him yet, but did see the bus on the parking lot so i think it's fixed!
ilka and me were already joking that tromsø is haunted for us or whatever, as last month here was a nightmare with the bus broken into and all the trouble with checking in...but on the other side, this was the 'best' day for something like this to happen as we're in the biggest town here in the north and didn't have to go anywhere else this afternoon!
i spent the afternoon at the polarmuseum with the guests and then i also went on board of the hurtigruten boat again that's in the harbour here in the afternoon. made some phone calls to arrange things for the next few days from the boat and then headed back to the hotel, where i'm writing this now!

tomorrow we'll be on our way to harstad on the vesterålen, hopefully nothing breaks and all the water is bacterium-free! ;)

from cooool & sunny finland

yes...it's cool here, especially since the 30-35 degrees we had in NL the last few days.
today it was around 16 degrees with some clouds and a lot of sun...and the sun is still above the sky right now (23:20 local time)

so where am i...? in ivalo, finnish lapland! tomorrow it's a 400 km drive to the north cape, please keep your fingers crossed with me that we'll see the midnight sun there this time!!!

the group is very nice, friendly people who are happy to be on a holiday...and happy to escape the heat haha! then there's driver ilka who i already know so that's nice :)

i have to say it's a lot more relaxed to do a trip that you've already done before. i know all i want/need to tell already and keep thinking of more stuff to add of course...there's always more to tell.

tonight i went to the sauna here in the hotel, so now i can finally say i've been to a ' real' (read: finnish) sauna. after the sauna i took a dip in the swimmingpool, which was c-c-c-cold!!! i did swim around for 20 minutes or something...so now i'm all fresh and quite awake actually...lol!

but i'd better go to bed after this, it's a long day tomorrow, we leave here at 8:45 and i probably won't be in bed before 01:00, after which it's another early start...and another one...and another one...welcome to the life of a travelguide ;)

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:















rain & fog at north cape...still very impressive!



















me at the north cape














visiting the famous carvings in alta














nice eh?!














it was cold up there but oh so nice!














at night in sørkjos (our hotel is the big white building)














waiting for our ferry to the lofoten















henningsvaer on the lofoten!














me in henningsvaer














another beautiful view on the lofoten














svolvaergeita (with 2 people on top!)















foggy sweden














midnight sun in kiruna (view from top floor balcony in hotel)














midnight sun on last night in rovaniemi




























ilka & me before saying goodbye in rovaniemi on the last morning

message from sørkjos

2, 4, 6, 8...39!

fjords, fjords, fjords
reindeer, reindeer, reindeer
and 1 elk today as well!

this is what i did (the counting) / saw most these last two days.

after my last blog from ivalo finland, we crossed the norwegian border near karasjok yesterday where we saw the sami parliament building and visited the sapmi museum, partly an open air museum about the way of living of the sami.
we then continued to honningsvåg...almost at the north cape!
unfortunately weather changed during the day and when we arrived at our hotel it was totally foggy and it even rained 2 hours later when we were picked up by our driver for the night...to go to the north cape! north cape is indeed less fun when there's no midnight sun to see and you're almost freezing taking pictures...but still it's impressive enough to stand at the edge of northern europe!

since yesterday the group-proces is complete i think, this results in not only a LOT of noice in the bus sometimes (who says schoolkids are the only ones making noice on a trip?!) but also people keeping track of me whenever they feel like it (' sarah, it's cold outside, why don't you put on your jacket?, ' here let me just pull your shirt down properly, don't get cold!'), even heard a ' sarah we looove you' when returning from the hotel reception with all the keys to hand out again...

anyway, as you can see in the title of this blog i'm in sørkjos right now...in between alta (we visited the famous carving there today!) and tromsø (tomorrow!). last year they stayed in a hotel in a village next to this one on this trip, would have been fun to stay there just because of the name... storslett, if you are dutch and know that stor means big this IS funny! but it's just lovely here...we're right in the middle of another fjord, so took some lovely picture after dinner tonight!!!

ok, gotta go...have a bath in my hotelroom today, so it better be used! :D

day 2: hotel in Ivalo

day number 2 has come to an end. things went pretty well until now!
of course people have loads of questions i can't always answer to immediately, but i think i am forgiven most of the time hehe ,)

the group is BIG (again, 39 people) and very diverse, there's a birdwatcher, a map-fanatic (sits behind me with a map on his legs), an almost deaf woman etc.... and of course the oldest person in the group (84 year old, with broken wrist!) seems to be one of the fittest among the elderly AND has been a travelguide herself haha!
all in all everyone's lovely, especially to me :D i've heard ' sarah can i just ask you this...', 'sarah what is that?' 50 times today, but i don't mind at all.

yesterday was mostly a travelling day, introduced myself to some people at schiphol already, later at the gate and in the plane and then at rovaniemi airport of course.
bus with finnish driver ilka polo (' please just call me ilka') was waiting at the airport when we arrived, counted the group around 3 times until i was sure we were complete.
turned out ilka had done this trip a couple of times last year and also 2 weeks ago already...he can dream the whole route and points out things to me i'm missing...couldn't be better!

today we travelled north from rovaniemi, through sodankylä (chaotic lunch as there was a film festival going on and the restaurant i booked was totally overcrowded, after that a lovely visit to a wooden sami church from the 17th C though) to ivalo. we also saw our first reindeers!!!

the hotel i'm writing this from now is lovely, apart from that, and maybe the ivalo river, there's not much to see here. good because we're heading for norway tomorrow at 8:45 (local time)!
we're going to karasjok, just on the other side over the norwegian border first tomorrow and will head to honningsvåg after that. a total of 400 km's...let's see if the group will still be as nice and lovely tomorrow night haha! well tomorrow night we're going to visit the north cape, 30 km's from honningsvåg, so they will probably love it!!!

gotta go now, prepare some last things for tomorrow before i head to my hotelbed.

nice!

just two pix of places i'm going to this coming week...






northcape plateau
(day 3 - friday)












fjellheisen in narvik
(day 8 - wednesday)

preparing

even if there's almost like a heat wave going on outside i'm at home...trying to prepare and organise things for my departure on wednesday
wednesday is D-day...my first official day as a travelguide...finally after all these months!

my flight to helsinki is going around 11:00, from there it's another flight up to rovaniemi where i'll officially present myself to my 39 guests. the oldest one is 84 by the way... :O
for the next 10 days we'll then travel around the upper north of scandinavia, wohaaa!

some pix i took yesterday:















binkie tightly hugging his plant















preparing