The Northest (We've Come to Norway, part 6)

We have a treat for you today: panoramas and a video. What?! I know. The panoramas show up kind of wonky here, but if you click on them, it should be better.

This morning, we awoke in Harstad. It was beautiful.



We ate a lovely hotel breakfast (as usual) and hit the road. It was also cold. There was window-scraping involved.

We drove and drove.

We made one stop in the small town of Setermoen to visit Soltun, a home for soldiers. It is a cozy home that provides free lodging for soldiers and inexpensive food. They even hold Bible studies on the weekends and have a pool table and ping pong. The Norwegian military is mostly stationed in the North, which puts many of the soldiers far away from their families. It was really heart-warming to see a place of such hospitality available for far-from-home 19 and 20 year-olds, coping with learning to be in the military and probably being very cold.

Finally, we arrived in Tromso, where we walked around until we found a place to eat.

After lunch, we visited with some Bible school students for a few hours. They were very hospitable and we made good use of their chocolate/coffee/milk/espresso machine. By the way, they have these everywhere here. America should take a hint and start making me more americanos at the push of a button.

At around 7:30, we took our leave and boarded a flight back to Oslo, where we checked into our new hotel room, which is on the 30th floor. Woah.

Alaina and I realized today that we were above the Arctic Circle and will likely never travel farther north than we were today. Neat.

Now it is 2:01am and I'm going to sleep. Have a good evening, America.