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TROMSO, Norway -- The botanical garden was the biggest surprise. Who expects to find a four-acre profusion of vivid natural color more than 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle?
Like so many polar explorers before us, my wife and I had come to this port of 60,000 inhabitants, situated on a humpbacked island in a broad fjord in northern Norway, to board a vessel to the frigid waters surrounding the North Pole. We had just two long July days to look around and we found plenty to occupy our time and attention.
At nearly 70 degrees north latitude, this is a city where being the world's northernmost in a number of categories is an important source of civic pride. Tromso's list of geographical accolades includes the world's northernmost university, brewery, cathedral, supercomputer, international film festival and, as we discovered, botanical gardens. This relative abundance of cultural institutions has given the city a reputation as Paris of the Arctic, a relative distinction, to say the least.
After all, this is a land where winter means two months of continuous darkness. However, in summer, each day consists of more than 20 hours of light and four hours of weak dusk, with the sun barely sinking below the horizon. That provides abundant opportunities to work and play, which the natives do with sufficient gusto to earn Tromso another somewhat incongruous moniker, the Ibiza of Norway.
While civilized settlements here date back as far as the 13th century, the city wasn't chartered until 1794. Its sheltered harbor first boomed in the 1850s as a fishing and trading center. It won some wider fame during the first decades of the 20th century, as the embarkation port for various sea expeditions in search of the North Pole, including those of Fridtjof Nansen, Roald Amundsen and Umberto Nobile. Tromso was occupied by the Nazis during World War II, and in 1944 British bombers found and sank the huge battleship Tirpitz, which the Germans had tried to hide in nearby fjords.
Although Tromso escaped the mass destruction the Third Reich practiced elsewhere in northern Norway and Finland, much of its historic center was destroyed during a catastrophic fire in 1969. The construction of a bridge to the mainland and an international airport ended Tromso's isolation. Establishment of the University of Tromso in 1972 helped propel the city's growth, and its emergence as a regional administrative seat and high-tech center have made industries such as bio-technology and aeronautics more productive than fishing and freight.
But tourism is also an important element year-round.
Tromso is a northern port for the Norwegian Coastal Steamer system and also a gateway to North Cape, the most northerly point of continental Europe.
From November to April, the combination of vast mountain ranges and mountains of snow and ice make for an abundance of winter sports activities, augmented by a bustling cafe culture and stupendous displays of Northern Lights. In fact, boasting both an International Film Festival and Northern Lights Festival, January is the busiest month on the Tromso social calendar, the prevailing darkness notwithstanding.
And though the temperate season is short, things blossom quickly, with a full range of outdoor adventures from hiking, biking, birding and freshwater fishing to deep-sea diving and whale-watching voyages.
Even though our stay was brief, we managed to get oriented and explore a bit of the city and the countryside.
Arriving on an evening flight from Oslo, we checked into the 270-room Radisson SAS Hotel, the largest in the city. Adjacent to the main pier in the city center, it proved a comfortable, convenient base for excursions by foot and on the public bus system, which efficiently crisscrosses the area. Here's a bit of what we saw.
After breakfast the next morning, we went a few blocks from the hotel to the Polaria Experience Center (www.polaria.no). It is sort of an Arctic science center and includes a walk-through aquarium filled with sea life and seals, along with the Polstjerna, a wooden sealing vessel.
Nearby we found the Art Museum of Northern Norway, which houses a modest painting collection, including several canvases by Edvard Munch.
On our way back to town, we popped into the Mack Brewery, founded in 1877 and still family-owned, but our timing was not right for either of the two guided tours offered each day.
So we strolled down Storgata, Tromso's main street, and through its pedestrian zone and Stortorget, the town square, with its open stall markets and statue of Roald Amundsen. Just beyond we found the Polar Museum (www.polarmuseum.no), a facility housed in a restored, wharf-side warehouse and packed with artifacts from the area's history, native peoples and polar expeditions. The nearby Skansen complex contains several old wooden houses that have been preserved.
After visiting those sites and a lunch of fresh-cut sandwiches, it was midafternoon. But with so many hours of daylight remaining, we decided to check out Tromso's most outstanding attraction, the Fjellheisen cable car, which runs to the top of Mount Storsteinen, the 1,400-foot-high hill hulking across the harbor from the city. The deck at the restaurant at the top station provided an excellent overview of the island, but we found even better vantage points during a several-hour hike along the long, treeless ridge line. Seeing a squall blowing across the fjord, we reluctantly made our way back to the cable car and rode it down.
By the time we reached bottom, the squall had blown by, so we decided to walk the mile across the spindly arched bridge back into town. Our route took us past the city's other famous landmark, the Arctic Cathedral, a towering creation constructed from 11 huge, triangular concrete sections framed by immense stained glass windows.
After freshening up at the hotel, we enjoyed a late dinner at Compagniet, a lovely little restaurant on the main drag, featuring a wonderful menu with locally grown or caught food and an extensive wine list. Upon leaving, even though daylight still illuminated the streets, our watches told us it was well after 11 p.m. and we headed back to the hotel and bed. This midnight sun can be exhausting.
The next day dawned damply, and we allowed ourselves a somewhat leisurely morning. We weren't scheduled to embark until 5 p.m., so when the skies cleared around noon we decided to take a bus to the botanical gardens.
At the right platform, a bus with the right number came along exactly as scheduled and we boarded. But to our surprise, it took off in the opposite direction. We quickly realized we were on the right bus but heading the wrong way. No matter -- we rode to the end of the line where the bus turned around. Our 15-minute ride to the gardens wound up being 45 minutes and something of an inadvertent sightseeing excursion.
As previously mentioned, the gardens were more than worth the extra time and a wonderful surprise. Organized and maintained by the university, the sprawling, informative Botanic Gardens (www.uit.no/botanisk) feature flora from across the world's arctic and Alpine zones. Despite its northerly location, the Tromso climate is tempered by Gulf Stream currents, and its 20-hour summer days offer some compensation for its relatively short growing season. Organized both geographically and by species, the garden's 16 sections range from the Himalayas to Alaska and from buttercup to rhododendrons and succulents. Also preserved was the original house of the small farm on which the gardens were first planted in 1995.
After two lovely hours in this garden of arctic Eden, we arrived back in town with plenty of time to board the MS Hanseatic and continue our journey. Our brief taste of Tromso had been more than tantalizing, and we agreed it would be interesting to return for further exploration.
For general information on visiting Tromso, see www.destinasjontromso.no.