Your favorite travel blogger (hopefully, that is me) really cares about you getting the complete travel experience. Since I am currently blogging a cruise called “Into the Midnight Sun.” I thought I better ensure you got a photo of…the midnight sun. And there it is…right above this paragraph. Before we went to bed on Saturday night (after leaving Honningsvåg), I set a silent alarm on my watch to wake up at midnight. When it went off, I checked outside our stateroom window to see if we were clouded over. If we were, I was going back to bed. But no such luck. The sun was up. It’s not high in the sky, but it’s definitely still up.

So I got up, got dressed, went up to the front deck outside the Explorer’s Lounge, and took this shot and one other I like a little more (but this one fits the page better), then I went back to our stateroom, got out of my clothes and went back to bed. But not before setting another silent alarm for 5:00 a.m. because that was when the Captain had said we would be sailing into the beautiful area that leads to Tromsø. Was he ever right? I have taken around 300-400 photos on almost every other day of the cruise. Between midnight and 9:30 Saturday night, when I went to bed, I shot 1,131 photos. Don’t worry; I am not going to make you look at all of them. I have reduced the total to around 85 and will break it up into smaller groups. I wish there weren’t so many, but I could not cover the city and the beautiful weather without them.

So here’s the first batch from our sail-in. The day was remarkable. The weather was incredible. I will try to put captions on all of them, but some need no explanation. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

The sail-in went on for quite a while. The captain had said in his noon announcement the day before that we would cross under the Tromsø bridge at approximately 6:00 a.m., and he was right. We did. Here are the photos of that crossing.

Tromsø is on an island. As we approached the island, there are two bridges, and the harbor was on the other side of both of them. Unfortunately, a ship the size of Viking Venus can’t fit under the older bridge, so we went under the new bridge and then had to sail all the way around the island to get to the port almost underneath the lower and older bridge. But that was OK with me because it provided me with even more photographic subjects.

After we docked, it was time for our (you guessed it) our “luxury motor coach” panoramic tour of Tromsø. This would be one of the best we have had. We jumped on the bus with our guide, Mirko Maiutto (sounds Italian to me), and we were off to the University in Tromsø (the Fighting Ravens), where we stopped for 40 minutes or so to watch a movie in their planetarium. Usually, this would have put me to sleep, but this one was about the aurora borealis, and we loved it. It was made by a local Tromsø filmmaker, and he did an outstanding job; their planetarium is very cool, with wonderful seats.

After that, it was time to tour the rest of the islands. Mirko was an excellent guide, and we learned a lot. You will have to read the captions on the photos to see what we did. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

After our tour with Mirko, we had some lunch, and I headed out for a long walk. I toured the harbor area, found the start of the old bridge and decided to walk across to the Arctic Cathedral to get some close-ups. Then, I walked back to the downtown area to get a closer look at some of the things we had seen on our panoramic “luxury motor coach” tour. It turned into a two-hour, six-mile walk, but the weather was so beautiful it barely felt like it. Here are the shots I got on that walk. Enjoy.

Sadly, I took several beautiful panoramic shots in Tromsø. Still, after combining them in Photoshop (one of my panoramic shots is usually composed of more than ten individual photos stitched together), they are just too large to upload with the current internet connection. The one at the top of this page is just one of the nine I wish I could include in this post.

That about does it for Tromsø. As you can see, it was a BEAUTIFUL day, and we had a wonderful time. Tomorrow, I will tell you all about the city of Bodø. The only hiccup this week is that Kathleen has now caught a cold. She keeps telling me it’s not my cold she caught because it has been too long since I had it, but at least I am over mine and can fully empathize with her.

Adventure is just bad planning.  —Roald Amundsen