Today the weather forecast is sleet for most of the day with two pockets of slightly better weather. A couple of hours in the morning and couple late in the afternoon.
We therefore decided to walk from our cabin this morning, round the fjord and then go into Tromsø this afternoon.
We started off towards the local town, Ersfjordbotn, keeping an eye on the clouds as we went. With the mountains either side of the fjord and the Atlantic in the distance, the clouds at the entrance of the fjord looked really dramatic. As the clouds entered the fjord they parted to form over the mountains on either side, occasionally leaving a little bit of blue sky or a puffy white cloud in the middle.
After walking through the town, with little to note, other than lots of pretty wooden houses, we headed along the edge the fjord as far we dared. Due to the beautiful sunshine we've had over the last few days the snow has begun to melt. As we walked along, the snow frequently ended up above our ankles with ice getting caught our boots and then promptly melting giving us cold, wet socks. Yuk!
Water has also started trickling down the rocks as the spring melt sets in. This also meant that occasionally we'd break through the ice into a shallow stream. Fortunately our boots are waterproof!
As the sleet suddenly started to get worse we decided to turn back and dry off our socks.
After lunch we set out into Tromsø. Every day so far that we've ventured out, the roads and streets have been empty. However today everyone seemed be out! We found some parking, thought we'd deciphered the parking meter, wandered off in the wrong direction, turned round wandered back, trousers already soaked (the weather forecast was wrong!), found place were looking for (apparently the falling dominoes building featured yesterday is the Polar Museum) and then realised the parking had run out 15 mins ago and we'd seen a traffic warden our travels.
We raced back to the car, wondering how on earth we had purchased less than 10 mins of parking. The machine said 15kr per hour or some other amount for the day. We had pushed the 1 button (not the 6 or 12) twice thinking this would give us 2 hours. It actually gave us 8 mins. No sticker was on the car so fingers crossed we don't get a parking ticket!
Cold and wet we, somewhat boringly, decided to head back to the cabin, stopping in the supermarket to pick up dinner on the way back.
The fish counter in the local supermarket (more the size of a UK high street supermarket shop) is a fish lovers dream. The fish counter and the bakery take up almost half of the shops total floor space!
The fish counter has every sort of fish you could think of, including fresh versions of the ones we've seen hanging up everywhere (see photo from 2 days ago).
We bought a fish pie (easy to cook given our limited kitchen), some traditional Norwegian cheese, the dried fish and straws that 'magically' turn normal milk into strawberry flavored milk.
When we got home Stu was keen to sample the Norwegian delights. I've had the cheese on my previous visit and had no desire to try it again. It looks like a golden cheddar but tastes sweet, frequently eaten with raspberry jam and waffles!
Stu cut a small chunk off and stuffed it in his mouth. A few seconds later he was running to the bathroom, mouth open shouting. Urghhh!
Cheese disposed of, he opened the dried fish and stuck it under my nose. Fortunately my nose is still blocked and I could only smell a faint hint of a horribly strong fishy smell. Stu once again popped some into his mouth and then the whole scene repeated again. Urghhh!
Having abused his pallet and with me in laughing hysterics Stu settled down to his strawberry milk (hard to believe he's 31 tomorrow! ;-) ). The magic milk fortunately was to his liking and the cheese and fish were both soon forgotten by his tastebuds.
With not much else to do because of the horrible weather, we settled down to watch a film together.
Unfortunately, even though the kp index is high tonight there is little chance of seeing the aurora as there is 100% cloud cover :-(
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