My Norwegian Tour

Yeeeeah!!! I finally bought the flight tickets and planned my Norwegian tour!!!

I must confess: writing down my travel dreams 2016 list pushed me to turn them in reality. Once said I wanna go somewhere, then I must go! Otherwise what the other people are gonna think? 😆

I spent lot of time thinking about the right period for this travel. I read tons of articles on blogs and websites, travellers chats on several social networks and the outcome was always the same: Norway is beautiful in every season. The main incentive is my deep hope in finding the Northern Lights, and everywhere I read that this phenomenon happens from September to April. But everybody go in February/March, because this period is the best in terms of clearness of the sky! in top of that, I cannot go in February/March, because of a holidays issue 😖

Then I did some in-deep researches and I found out that:

• many people saw the Aurora in October too!
• Norway is so beautiful (especially in autumn colours) that I would be happy anyway, regardless the Aurora!

Eventually I said to myself: "Fu** all these worries, I'm going anyway!! And if I won't see the Northern Lights, I'll search for them next year, in Iceland or in Finland! " 😎
Among the several blogs I got inspiration from, I'd like to mention:

• Francesca Dani's amazing pictures. She's been the one that more than others made me have dreams about Northern Lights!
• Fabrizio Paravisi, who wrote an useful and excellent article about Lofoten Islands on lightpainting.it
• a nice chat with Valeria Castiello, who wrote a couple of interesting pieces about Bergen and the nearby fjords on her blog valeriacastiello.com
• Greta and Filippo who wrote about Northern Norway and gave advices about how to photograph the Aurora Borealis; their blog: TheGretaEscape
• @Visitnorway and @visitBergen Twitter accounts, who aroused my emotions everyday!

Let's cut to the chase!
This is the tour we'll do: it will be 10 days long (click on the picture to enlarge):

October 1st we'll take a direct flight from London to Bergen with Norwegian Airlines.
We'll land in Bergen on the late morning and we'll quickly go to discover the Bryggen narrows, we'll visit the famous fish market and maybe the aquarium.
The day after we'll take the Fløibanen Funicular going up to Mt. Fløyen, where we'll enjoy a beautiful view of Bergen from above. The rest of the day will be free, because sometimes I also like to have time to follow my instincts instead of a prearranged itinerary.

The third day we'll take the train to travel the famous Bergen-Oslo route, known as one of the most beautiful train route in the world!
We'll follow the Norway in a nutshell tour, by purchasing a sort of cumulative ticket that allows to take trains, bus and ferry for a small fjord cruise among Nærøyfjord and Aurlandsfjord, arriving at Oslo in the late evening of the same. I can't wait!!

Because we've already been to Oslo, I decided to avoid spending too much time at the capital: we'll sleep there just one night and the day after we'll take the flight to Evenes.

At that point we'll rent a car and spend 4 days on the Lofoten Islands, a heaven on Earth!
We'll stay 2 nights in Reine, a really romantic village, in a Rorbu!!!! "Rorbu" means "the oarsman's house", and it's the traditional wooden red fishermen's house, indeed. I'm sure I'll switch off the phone and I'll not want to leave! 😍
Around Reine we'll visit Nusfjord, Å and we'll go up to the Reinebringen Mount to see the villages from above.

We'll spend the 2 nights left in Svolvaer, Lofoten main city and the oldest in the Artic Circle.
We'll visit Svolvaer's beautiful surroundings, Henningsvær e Kabelvag villages.

The eighth day we'll drive to Tromso.
We could have taken a 30 min flight but we choose to drive 6 hours to have the chance to stop over for pictures and enjoy the landscape!
In Tromso we'll visit the Mack's Brewery, the Artict Cathedral and the wooded one; we won't skip the cable car to go up to the Storsteinen Mount: I think it's clear I love to see landscapes from above! 😁
During the evenings we'll drive outside the city, far from the artificial lights, hunting Aurora in DIY mode!
We'll come back to London on the 10th October with the Scandinavian Airlines, after a stop in Oslo.

Despite finding the Northern Lights is my biggest hope, I didn't mention it a lot for a reason: the greater the expectations, the greater the subsequent disappointment. We could find cloudy sky for 10 days in a row, who knows?

In the meantime I'm trying to avoid thinking too much about it, but secretly crossing my fingers: I gave up my summer holidays to follow my Norwegian dream! 😝