Tromso

Was it worth spending 200 bucks going up, 200 bucks going back, a 20% premium to southern Norway (a 30% premium to the US) in prices, and 25 dollar unused intl drivers license to see mountains up close and twilight all day? In your 30s with youth slipping away and future responsibilities pending, I suppose anything is worth it.

Tromso is at 69 degrees north latitude with two months all day sunshine late May to late July. Being cloudy outside, one pretty much couldn't tell what time it was- it looked like it was 6-7p whether it was 7p, 1a, or 10a. It looked like a small midwestern US city- 70s era buildings and signs, not much else around the region, and lots of delinquents running around.

Lower mgmt spent 25 bucks and an hour in NY getting a cheap intl drivers booklet from AAA only to realize there aren't any automatic transmissions in northern Norway- so out with driving the beautiful island of Kvaloya in the middle of the night.

We busted the bed/breakfasts internet network by trying to connect the line to upper mgmt's corporate laptop. How? We don't know but we slithered away a bit embarrassed. We tried to mingle with the locals but found the preponderance of 20-somethings wearing black and with nothing to do a bit undesirable. Besides they stared at us a lot- we must have been the only Chinese people within 1000 miles.

So we strolled around, paid a lot of money to see their typical tourist attractions (what kind of church charges for entrance? Maybe one named the Arctic Cathedral with a whopping one wall of stained glass that a 3rd grader could have designed)- 20 bucks to see a polar museum essentially 5 seals and a film about Svalbard (which Tromso is STILL 500 miles away from).

So we saw our vistas, took photos that had midnight time stamps, ate expensive food and got the hell out of there, armed with a story for our future kin.