February 16, 2020 – Kirkenes and Vardo

February 16, 2020 – Kirkenes
Breakfast was very crowded this morning due to our first stop was 9am. Also, many passengers were disembarking. This is our turnaround stop. We will stop at the same ports going back to Bergen except that the nighttime stops will now be daytime stops.
At 9am, we docked at Kirkenes. It took a while to get off because of the number of disembarking passengers. We were on our bus and going slightly before 9:30am. First stop was the Russian Border. We all took the obligatory picture of the sign. The small souvenir shop had a very friendly Malamute which loved getting petted. Russians and Norwegians living within 30km of the border are allowed to cross easily. The Norwegians go to Russia to get liquor and cigarettes at lower prices. The Russians come to Norway for items unavailable in Russia.
Back on the bus, we headed to the Snow Hotel. The whole hotel is made of ice and snow. Each bedroom has an ice bed and ice decorations. The entry way is called Santa’s workshop. At the rear of the building is a bar that is only open 2 hours a day. The guide said you can only spend one night and most people don’t stay until morning. The sleeping bags are rated to -32°C. When someone wakes early in the morning to use the facilities in the lodge, they tend to stay there. They also offer dog sledding so we got yo meet many of the dogs. The ship left Kirkenes at 12:30p .
At 3:45pm, we stopped in Vardo. Peter took most of our group on a 45 mi ute “nighttime” walk. Vardo is extremely windy so I was glad when we got back.
At 5pm Peter showed us a movie he is working on that follows a Hurtigruten ship during summertime .
Dinner tonight was herring salad or roast beef salad, reindeer steak and reindeer sausage, Russian Honey cake. The reindeer was quite good.
It is cloudy tonight so possibly no Northern Light Activity. We are heading back to Bergen. Tomorrow night many of us are attending a midnight concert in the Cathedral in Tomso.