Tuesday 28th February 2017

Last night we saw the Northern Lights for the first time - ribbons of green light hanging in the sky and altering in form constantly. When we woke this morning we had left the west coast of Norway and had instead turned east to journey along the north coast bordered by the Barents Sea. The landscape is different here - low rounded hills worn down by millennia under icecaps.

We docked at Honningsvag on the island of Mageroya at about 11.30. Mageroya is connected to mainland Europe by an undersea tunnel, reputedly with the most expensive tunnel toll in the world. The reason this tunnel exists is to allow road access to "The North Cape" which reputedly has the most expensive car park and the most expensive cafe in the world. "The North Cape" is supposed to be the most northerly point on continental Europe. It isn't. It's on an island!

The ship was virtually empty. Most passengers it seems were off on an excursion to "The North Cape" - a short coach trip costing £136 per person. Presumably it will be costing them a lot more if they are rash enough to patronise the aforementioned cafe! 

We took a walk around town. It was very snowy indeed.

Here's the main street.

We saw this nice icicle hanging up on a shop front.

Honningsvag is a fishing port.

There is a fair amount of public art on the quayside.

The overall impression of the town was of snow.........

.........lots and lots of it!

We saw some fish hanging up to air dry.

This dog was keeping an eye on it's "owner's" fishing boat.

In Norway, Sweden and Finland strong alcoholic drinks cannot be bought in ordinary grocery shops. It is only available in restaurants and bars and state run shops like this. In Sweden these shops are called Systembologet and in Finland Alco. Incidentally, if by chance you don't already know, alcoholic drinks cost an absolute arm and a leg round here.

After 45 minutes or so we reckoned that we'd "done" Honningsvag so we went back to our ship for lunch. 

Talking of lunch, we have found out that Hurtigruten used to provide passengers going on the coach trip from here to "The North Cape" with packed lunches but that they have stopped doing this as a substantial number of these passengers used to use the packed lunch wrappings to litter the route to and from "The Cape" thus scandalising the very litter averse Norwegian locals!

Continuing east along the northern coast of Norway, our ship passed this strange looking sea stack as darkness approached.

The last rays of the sun lit up the cliffs as we passed by.