Still in Tromso

[indigo_rose99]

We slept in,  though only in as much as my brother R banging pots would let us. It was about 7 hours of sleep.

We all thought this stop would be traditional hotel rooms. Instead it was a 3-bedroom apartment with 1 bathroom and a kitchen. The bathroom had a washer and dryer, which everyone made use of in spite of our inability to read any of the knobs.

The upside was that each bedroom had a double bed (vs the twin beds in the B&B in Kirkenes). Ours even had a small hanging wardrobe and a desk. The downsides were

* My brother R has jet lag and wakes up early. To cook. Noisily.

* My brother R considers 36F-50F acceptable temperatures. Yes, inside. His bedroom had a heater, which he promptly turned off.

* Our bedroom did not have a heater.

*There was some sort of weak heater in the kitchen, but at full blast (30C, according to the knob) sitting 2 inches away, I couldn't feel any heat from it. Oh yes, and R insisted on turning it down to a very low temperature. The knob read 20C, but I'm convinced it lied.

I was cold all of the time in Tromso. Inside the apartment I wore leggings, winter fleece-lined pants, 2 long-sleeved quick dry shirts, a sweater, and a fleece. I was still cold. And generally I'm not one of those people susceptible to the cold.

The single bathroom and lack of schedule meant I was number 4 in getting a shower. Sometimes the water got up to an exciting but brief lukewarm. T waited to take his shower in the hope that the water would warm up, but it meant we didn't actually get outside until about 2pm.

We split off from the group and just wandered the town. That was nice.  We went by 2 comic book shops. One of them sold lego which T has not been able to find in the US. Dangerous to our packing. We wandered a sex shop, a library, and many coffee bars.

At about 5pm we wandered back to the apartment to finish laundry. And nap. I took the nap, T had dinner with Txpenguin &T. It was nice. When I got up at about 9:30pm, there was pizza waiting for me.

We packed up, checked out at 10:45pm, and hung out in the lobby of the hotel until out ship arrived at 11:45pm. T (of txpenguin &T) had fallen (slippery ice city on a mountain!) earlier exiting the lobby, so he and S took a cab. They also took R&D's carryon bags. The rest of us walked down to the pier.

It was the fastest boarding of a ship I've ever been a part of. We waited outside for perhaps 10 minutes. They didn't take pictures of us,  they didn't demand credit cards. They just looked at our passports and reservations,  gave us room cards and we were in.