The Cube

The fortress was originally built at the end of the 13th century as a medieval royal castle with a seat for the king's representatives, the fortress today functions as Norway's national arena. Throughout its more than 700-year history, Akershus Fortress has survived several sieges, but has never been taken by force by a hostile, foreign army. Entrance to the fortress is free of charge. 

From Akershus Fortress we crossed passed The Storting (Norwegian Parliament) Karl Johans gate. 

Karl Johans gate is the main street of the city of Oslo. The street was named in honor of King Charles III John, who was also King of Sweden as Charles XIV John. We walked down Karl Johans gate by the National Theatre, all the way to the Royal Palace. 

As we have been lucky enough to catch the northern lights prior to arriving in Tromsø, we didn't sign up for any more tours to aurora hunting. The one other thing we wanted to see in Tromsø are the fjords. As our fjord excursion to Narvik was cancelled, we signed up one in Tromsø. I think this is also a famous excursion among visitors to Tromsø because when we looked up the tours a day before, quite a few companies were already booked out on the days we would be in Tromsø. We booked via the Visit Tromsø website based on offering versus price. 

Tromsdalen Church, also known as Ishavskatedralen (The Arctic Cathedral) was quite hard to be missed. The main entrance on the western side is surrounded by a large glass facade. We didn't enter but just took some photos from the outside before we crossed the bridge to the other side. 

One of the recommended place to visit by our fjord excursion guide was this Mack's brewpub and the brewery guided tour. It is one of the the largest tap selection in Europe serving Norwegian quality beers. This brewery is also the northernmost brewery in the world. We didn't make it to the guided tour but we did find time to have a drink at the pub. The only word I know is Øl is beer. 

Our fjord excursion guide recommended some eating places, the ones I remembered are Mathallen, 

Indie & Co and Suvi. There was one that we initially wanted to go to try reindeer meat but because we were going to have an early dinner, they were not yet open for dinner service. I can't seem to remember the name of the restaurant now unfortunately. We did, however, had reindeer stew the next day at the Fjellstua Restaurant, at the top of the Fjellheisen. 

We went to Suvi. Usually I am not a big fan of restaurants that sells various cuisines type but this was after all in Tromsø where seafood were abundant. I was skeptical but the sushi and sashimi were superb. 

I woke up randomly in the middle of the night the 3 nights we were in Tromsø to see if there was any chance to spot the northern lights but no luck. I think the lights were spotted in Tromsø the duration we were there though, just not where we were located. 

The Arctic Circle Train is the scenic railway that runs through Swedish Lapland to the Narvik fjord in Norway. This legendary night train departs from Stockholm and crosses Sweden to Kiruna, a town in the heart of Lapland, famous for its iron ore mine, the largest in the world. From Kiruna, the Arctic Circle train goes to Abisko. We would've got on this part of the Arctic Circle train if we managed to get a ticket in Kiruna. Anyways, we were onboard from Abisko to Narvik, a port town in Norway. It felt like looking at black and white water colour paintings from the train. 

The train ride was only about 1 hour 30 minutes, and sis went and got us coffee from the cafeteria. Train ride, breathtaking sceneries and coffee - great things in life.

We arrived in Narvik around 12:35pm. Our initial plan was to spend a couple of hours in Narvik before taking a later bus which would bring us to Tromsø before 8pm. It was a Sunday on our travel day and most of the shops in Norway were closed. We figured we may have enough time to get to the Narvik Cable Car, there are lockers to store bags in the train station but from memory it needed coins which was one of the reason we didn't leave it before decided not to linger in Narvik. 

It was super windy on the day of our travel and we didn't want to risk of bus cancellation so we decided to just take the next available bus at 1:10pm to Tromsø. This round of bus commute takes more than 4 hours and the bus was almost full, so not the most comfortable travel. We paid for tickets on the bus to the driver, NOK 976. It is said that it is cheaper if you pre-buy a ticket. Another rookie mistake of not having enough snacks, we shared a last muesli bar till reaching Tromsø at 5:30pm. 

On arriving in Tromsø, we found out that buses within the city does not take payment by credit card in the bus itself. We were cashless, the driver was willing to wait for us to download the Troms Billett to pay for the ticket but our sim card is in sis's phone which was flat. It would take us to long to navigate around this so we got off the bus to avoid holding it up. We walked to the nearest bright shop, dropped our bags and started our activities of swapping sim card, downloading the app, setting up payment and buying bus tickets. Information on bus tickets and fares are here. Another thing to note is that, buses in Tromsø would only stop if you flagged it down, else they don't. 

 

Abisko is a small town in the Lapland region of northern Sweden. Abisko village is around the train station "Abisko Östra" and we stayed in Abisko Guesthouse which is a short walk away from this station as well. There is another train station - Abisko Turiststation about 2 kilometres west. There's a fairly large and well equipped hotel/hostel, STF Abisko Turiststation near this station. 

I read that Abisko has a reputation of offering some of the best conditions in the world for northern lights watching where unique climate of the area keep the skies almost clear. I'm not sure how true this is but we did see the northern lights 2 out of 4 nights we were there. To be fair, we were tired out the evening we arrived and it was snowing. On our last night, we woke up and checked the live camera at Aurora Sky Station and there were no lights seen so we continued sleeping. I can't remember but there prob were some lights during the night. For some unknown reasons, we were perpetually sleeping and has been sleeping a lot during the trip. 

We walked to Abisko National Park and did part of the shorter walks but the main reason was we wanted to see the frozen waterfalls. The frozen waterfalls are at the Abisko Canyon, quite close to the start of the trails. It is part of the Canyon Trail (which is about 30 mins - 1 hour). The trail is marked on signs as a yellow hexagon with two black dots. The path takes you along the outer rim of the Abiskojakka Canyon (Abisko Canyon). There were people doing ice climbing here when we were there. My camera battery was flat after a couple of photographs here. I took some with my phone but hands went numb fairly quickly as I had to take off the gloves to use the phone. 

I don't know which turn we took but we ended up part of the Shore Trail (green hexagons with 6 white dots) so we walked to see Lake Torneträsk.