Hello from Tromso, Norway!
The early bird gets the worm - or in this case the pictures - when she was on her balcony at 6 AM as the ship navigated through fjords to get to port.
When I was here in June I had to run through multiple plans to finally settle on what I was doing for the day. You can read about my June visit to Tromso here. It was on that June day when I realized the Arctic Alpine Botanical Garden wasn't going to be an option because of the hills.
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| June 17, 2023 |
Just in case I might need them I strapped my walking sticks to the scooter handlebars and off we went. We thankfully found there was a tunnel under the busy road but not-so-thankfully it was steep going into and out of so it required me pulling and pushing Scooter. And those places in the tunnel that were level? Not so fast - they were torn up. More pushing and pulling. Ugh.
As expected most of the surfaces during the visit to the garden were problematic. I knew the gravel and the hills were going to be issues but I learned about another surface Scooter can't manage, either.
If it was deep gravel I had to get off and pull him but if it was compact gravel I could drive.
And the new thing Scooter doesn't like? Slippery moss. We might as well have been on ice especially when it was combined with the mud we got into.
Anything with an incline - which was most every path - required me to push or pull him up or down the hill.
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| Hazardous driving conditions |
In some instances the terrain was impossible so I had to break out the walking sticks and leave Scooter behind. My sticks and I tackled several kinds of stone steps.
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| Careful, Deb |
See Scooter hiding in the bushes down there? Yep, poor boy couldn't handle it even with my help.
I knew I couldn't even come close to making it up these stone steps so I didn't even try.
The garden is the northernmost botanical garden in the world with Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine plants from all continents. Those plants can be tiny and grow so close to the ground you really have to get up on them to see them.
They also have a large collection of perennials from Norway and we worked hard to see as much as we could, going up the hills as far as the paths went. For the most part it was me walking while dragging Scooter alongside me. It was a tough go, for sure. The garden had plenty of well-placed benches with beautiful views and I took full advantage of them both. The blue skies and clouds added an additional layer of beauty to the day.
I took so many pictures (and deleted even more) but it was too hard to choose my favorites so you get to see a collection of what I saw.
Tomorrow we're in Honningsvag, Norway. See you then!