Winter Europe Trip 9th December 2022 (Friday) Day 13

(This posted is written on 16th March 2023, I finally have time as the school term has ended and I really missed our Europe trip) *Look at that, I managed to update my travel journal till Day 13!

We've been looking forward to this day as we were finally going for our lights chasing tour. Although the previous two nights we've already seen the Nordlys, we were hopeful that we would see something more with the tour. As like the previous day, we felt too lazy to go anywhere after breakfast, and we only went back to the room to rest and nap. The meeting time for the tour was at 6.45pm so we went out at 5pm to get dinner. We wanted to have some Italian food like pasta but we ended up at this Italian pizza restaurant quite near to our hotel instead. We were not choosy since we had to finish dinner and go back to the room to get all wrapped up for the tour, so time is a factor here. 

The pizza was really good

This YouTuber was mentioned in my previous blog and she's a Italian. This Storhus pizzaria is in one of her recommendations and I agree that it was really good. It's sold in Norwegian price so dont expect it to be exactly very cheap by our normal standards but I felt the pizza quality made up for it. After the meal, we went back to the hotel but we got a bit absorbed watching the semi-finals of World Cup where the match moved into penalty kick so we were rushing out when it was time to go down for the tour. Luckily, the pickup point is right outside our hotel.

Our van was filled with tourists

We got on our way

The cosy lavvu that saved our life that night

Gathered around the cosy room

There were free flow hot drinks and cake too

Our tour vendor Karl who shared a lot of stories

Our tour vendor as recommended by the YouTuber is Tromso Frilulftsenter, the lady who helped us book the tour at the 'Northern Lights' shop also said that this is one of the vendors in Tromso with a long history and from the reviews of the YouTuber, their service is very warm and personal. The cosy vibes of the tour attracted us and we decided to wait for this day to go for the tour as the previous day's tour was fully booked. It's a husband and wife team and there were two vans waiting outside when we went out of our hotel, so they brought about two van full of people every night. We were one of the latest groups to report at the venue so we had to sit right at the back of the van, together with another couple from the US. We were all wrapped up and after awhile, we realised the van was heated so we had to take off some layers although there were not much space in the van to do that. 

For this particular tour vendor, they have a piece of land in the outskirts with their lavu and it's a good spot for seeing the Nordlys, so they brought us right there, explaining that it does not make sense to keep driving and chasing after the lights like what some other tours do, as it'll be quite cold out there. I guess it all make sense and I'm also glad that we'll have a place to keep warm as I saw many reviews saying they were freezing cold when doing the lights chasing. The journey was about 40 min drive and along the way, they showed us informative video about how the Northern Lights came about. We cross the bridge and drove away from the city, coming to a place with snowy landscape and only a few houses on the land. Each of the van took up one lavvu and the tour vendor with us was the husband of the team, we were glad to get the lavvu that is all enclosed so it's all warm and good inside. 

The lights did turn up and it was there for hours

It was a pretty nice landscape to get the photos

Everyone took lots and lots of pictures

Karl was helping everyone with photos

Many people also set up their own tripod

We shamelessly asked for lots of photos

They uploaded these into the website for us to download

Other than sharing cool stories about Norwegian and living in Norway, the vendor Karl also helped us take lots of photos from different angle, to capture the beauty of the NL. We were lucky in a sense, as the lights were there for hours and we thought the previous night they had seen more out there (according to the display we saw on Storsteinen) but he told us it was about the same. It was really cold but still bearable as from time to time, we could go into the lavvu to rest and get warmed up. Honestly, for the whole of the trip, Norway and Tromso was not as bitterly cold as I had expected and I had survived with Uniqlo wear and their ultra heat tech. The parts that got to me first were usually my feet and fingers, actually I only realised it when I was in Amsterdam that I could have put on my Northface snow boots instead of wearing my Asics shoes. That might have help. But I totally forgot about those even thought I brought them along.

This was the brightest it got that night

Buck with spectacular lights

Me taking photo of Karl taking photo of P

Lights coming from another direction

One of our couple photos (P did not like it due to his double chin)

Another nice photo of P

This is mine

At one or two point in the night, all of us were back in the lavvu, either too cold outside or the lights were just the same throughout. Karl then passed around hot drinks and cake, he also shared interesting stories and we also interacted with the other tourists. We were the only asians in the group and there were quite a few Germans and some Italians, plus the Americans who sat with us earlier. We were quite thick skinned and asked for a lot of photos as we did not bring professional camera DSLR etc to capture all these, just taking photos with our phones. I knew that tripod is a must, and I told P to get a tripod so we can take better photos, but he bought a cheap one online and the catch broke just when we were trying to use it. 

This was the second best with us but my double chin showed!

Another one of us but the light was not spectacular and my hair...

The landscape is nice but not the couple in front lolx

To be really honest, we were a bit disappointed when it was around 1030pm or 11pm we decided to call it a day as the lights got dimmer and it seemed like it would not get any better tonight. We have seen those brochures and YouTube videos when the lights were crazily dancing but we did not see such spectacular sights. A disclaimer here, it's totally no fault of the vendor as they cannot guarantee how the weather or the lights will turn out with so many elements out there, and it's a natural phenomenon. I do have friends who got all the way to Finland and saw nothing and something lesser than us. We went through the photo albums provided by Tromso Friluftsenter and we did see better lights than those who went a few days before us, it's just based on luck as the NL in late November were way better but we did not think of rushing to Tromso so early in the holidays. Throughout the three nights of us in Tromso, we did see lights 4/10 or 5/10, although it was not the best, it was definitely not the worst. 

Another issue regarding lights chasing is that the whole thing really looked way better in videos and photographs, so many people felt the same as me, a tad disappointed when seeing it with naked eyes as most of the times it was not green but more of greyish and cloud like colour. Luckily, we were still able to recognise it as the American couple commented that they might have seen NL when they were in Iceland previously but they did not know it looked like that. Perhaps we would feel way more satisfied if we had a good time lapse video of the lights but is that really satisfying since it'll be just spectacular on video?

One last thing regarding the whole light chasing tour which left me in mixed feelings, this was totally personal and nothing to do with the vendor. We went online to download our photos the next day and we have quite a few photos but we did not like any of the couple photos we had as we looked quite frumpy with the high res, we had dark eye rings and double chin with the tripod below us and so on lolx... Nevertheless, I guess this concluded our whole lights chasing tour, in retrospect we were luckier than we felt at that point of time, but we probably already had it ticked off our bucket list and would not spend all the money traveling up north for Nordlys again. In a nutshell, I would still recommend Tromso for the high chance of catching the lights and this particular vendor we engaged for the tour.