Tromso
We docked in Tromso from morning till evening. Tromso is a thriving municipality with a population of over 75,000 residents. It boasts having the northernmost city in the world. It also has the most northern botanical gardens and a University. The city also has a symphony orchestra and a number of museums.
We didn’t plan any excursions today. Instead we planned to visit some of the sites near the port. We left the ship early afternoon and stayed out until shortly before our ship’s departure.
This is a scene from the harbor. The Arctic Cathedral in the picture is across the harbor from where we stood.. We didn’t get there but saw pictures of the interior with its unique architecture and stained glass.
We spent the afternoon exploring Tromso. There were lots of things to see within a short walk of where our ship docked.
After walking around we visited the Tromso Aquarium, Polaria. It is a small aquarium but has some nice exhibits with a lot of information about the waters off of northern Norway.
All of the meals on our cruise ship have been excellent but we wanted to do one nice dinner off of the ship that served local fish. Before leaving for the trip I did a lot of searching and found the Tromso restaurant, Fiskekompanient. The restaurant was just 2 blocks from our cruise ship so it couldn’t be more convenient. It was quite pricy but this was the one meal we were doing off ship. I told the waiter we had high expectations and the meal did not disappoint. The restaurant offers a 4 course or a 6 course Price Fix dinner with an optional wine pairing, We opted for the 6 courses with wine pairing. Each of the first 5 courses had a different fish, and the dessert was a rhubarb sorbet. The meal was outstanding and it was beautifully presented. The first course was a cured uncooked halibut with red tinted apple. We’d never had halibut prepared anything like this. It was excellent as were all of the other courses.
Our day in port happened to coincide with the Norway Midnight Sun Marathon, the most northern marathon in the world. Norway likes to claim the most northern of a lot of things. There were lots of runners from all over the world in town for the marathon. We enjoyed watching them warm up as we ate dinner and walked through the town. We then got to see the start from our cruiseship.
Our cruise ship was right next to the starting line so we got some great views of the start and enjoyed seeing all of the runners
