The ship docked in Tromso early this morning.   We are at the Breivika dock which is a couple miles outside the city center.  There is not much around to see so we booked a short excursion which was labeled “Easy” by Princess.  I thought we might have wheelchair guests on the bus, but the buses have no lifts so anyone on the excursion has to be able to climb the stairs to get into the bus. 

We started with a city drive with the guide pointing out a few landmarks. Our first stop at the Polaria Arctic Experience Center was pretty interesting. It’s part aquarium and part museum.  The outside of the building is designed to look like huge blocks of ice from icebergs that have been pushed up on land in a realistic yet haphazard fashion.  The view to see the building formation is better from the sea than from the land.  Inside, we watched a panoramic film about sea and land animals in Svalbard, the most northerly island archipelago in Norway.  Afterwards, we had time to walk through the building.  The most popular exhibit is the pool with bearded seals, but they also have a touch-pool with docents on hand to help children.   Polaria claims to be farther north than any other aquarium in the world.

The Arctic Cathedral was the next stop on our tour.  It is a modern Church of Norway church.  (Our guide said it was a Lutheran church so I guess those denominations are the same.)  Built in 1965 of concrete, aluminum, and steel, it looks like an A-frame building from the front, and has triangular sections in varying sizes stacked side-by-side to create the building.  A large, stained-glass wall takes up almost the entire east end.  When it was originally built, the windows were clear glass, but that caused the parishioners to sit blinded facing the sun during summer morning services.  The beautiful, colored, stained glass was added later.  The glass is lit electrically so the colors show up all the time, inside and out. 

Philip and I both enjoyed the tour to see the Polaria center and Arctic Cathedral.  We considered a longer tour that would include the cable car ride to the top of the mountain in the east side of Tromso, but happy that we didn’t choose it for today.   We had decided that we could take a bus to the base of the cable car in the afternoon by ourselves.  As it turned out, we skipped going up the cable car.  The sky was so overcast that the view from the top did not look promising.   

We had a slow afternoon and evening which is one of the things we like best about cruising.  

The Medallion app has been working fine for us.  We have ordered food and drinks three times.  The first and third time, the order arrived quickly.  The other time, they took longer, but not too bad.  I have read so many negative reviews about it that I did not have very high expectations.  I’m glad that it is better than expected.  The one time I asked a question on the Crew Chat line, the answer wasn’t satisfactory.  I followed up with a second question asking for clarification, but no one ever responded to that.  It’s been three days now.  

Tonight about 10:30, we strolled around on Deck 15 for a while chatting with other passengers who were also out waiting for the Northern Lights to appear.  We did not see anything again tonight.  We will have several more opportunities before leaving the Arctic and are still hopeful.  Other passengers posted their photos from last night.  We missed that show, too.  

Edited to add: We did see the Northern Lights, but we were not aware that that was what we were seeing.  I suppose that should not count as a sighting, but I do have a few photos where the green lights can be seen shining behind spotty clouds.