How cold was the North cape…….

In total we spent three nights on board the ‘Richard with’ pulling into many ports throughout the day and night. Some stops would only be for 15-20 minutes just to load and offload cargo, other stops up to an hour to embark and disembark passengers, but the main stops were Honningsvag to visit the North Cape, Kirkenes to visit the ‘Snow hotel’, and Hammerfest, all three stops were between 2-4 hours each to enable passengers to take short shore tours and explore independently.

Honningsvag

We took a 30 minute coach tour to the North Cape. The landscape was bare and eerie, like time had stood still. Temperature cold, very cold! The North Cape being the most Northern tip of Europe where many explorers have stood over the Centuries is a place I still find very hard to put into words, you really have to experience it for yourself to fully understand where I’m coming from, hopefully these photo’s will give you a good idea. The space of time from getting off the ship to getting back on was roughly 2 hour, as you can see it got light then by 1:30pm it was pitch black again.

Kirkenes

Here we had a guided tour of the ‘Ice Hotel’ which was still under construction, even so it was great to see work in progress and how much time and effort was involved for a development which would only be in use for a few weeks. The Ice hotel is due to open on the 1st January.

The Ice Hotel is actually built as an add on to the Snow Hotel. The Snow hotel is open all year round, In November they construct the Ice Hotel at the front of the Snow Hotel main building, guests stay in individually designed bedrooms in the Ice Hotel and use the facilities such as restrooms and restaurants in the Snow Hotel. You are able to tag a few nights onto the beginning or end of your cruise if you wish to stay here.

This is the main building of the Snow Hotel.

These are the lodges at the Snow hotel which can be stayed in all year round….

This was the Ice hotel under construction….

 Hammerfest

This was the prettiest port we stopped at, the houses all lit up with Christmas stars and shops full of very expensive Christmas gifts…..

I’ll save the best till last and tell you about the dog sledging next time………………