Unending Travel.

[No pics yet because we haven’t seen the anything outside of an airport /airport hotel in 42 hours. But here’s a map of Norway, for reference.]

However far away you think the Arctic Circle is, add 2 billion miles. It’s really fucken far. And the city of Tromsø (our home base for the next few days), is 217 miles north of *that*. The weather in Tromsø yesterday was particularly challenging (read as: pure evil).

And we were soooooo close.

After circling for what felt like all eternity, our flight into Tromsø had to abort due to deteriorating weather conditions. Running low on fuel at that point, so we got to experience an unscheduled midnight refueling stop at the “closest land-able airfield”, a town called Bodø (pronounced Budda). Sat on the plane for another hour to refuel, and then diverted back to Oslo.

I was delusional from lack of sleep at this point. We got our bags, and boarded a shuttle to an airport hotel. Naturally, we were two of about 150 people needing to check in at 3am. There was one poor staff on hand to handle the mob.

Did meet a super charming Norwegian man while in the hotel check-in line who grew up in Tromsø. He said, “Ah, so you’ve had a nice northern Norwegian experience.”

Yes.

Silver lining (if I can find one after this many hours of travel): we did sort of see the Northern Lights from the plane last night. Beautiful. And absolutely impossible to photograph.

Got a restorative 3 hours of sleep (the most I’ve had since Friday). Ready to face the day. Back at Oslo Airport to attempt the trip to Tromsø again.