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Sortland Norway

After a crazy rough night the ship docked at Sortland.   I looked on TripAdvisor And Sortland, to be honest didn't have a lot going for it.   It seems to be a good place to start hiking various trails, and the main attractions were well out of the city.  So really the big attraction here was the deep snow!! We slept late because of the bad night And we had a late breakfast.  Quite yummy eggs benedict in the pool side cafe.  We got very well wrapped up and headed into town. Sortland is known as the blue town as an artist, for a kind of giant Installation, had painted many of the buildings in various shades of blue.  While there were a lot of blue buildings It wasn't as evident as I thought it might be.  They were quite a lot of buildings that were dated 1800s But they still looked all shiny and new,  there were even more modern looking flat rooftop, office/ apartment blocks And while it wasn't unpleasant it wasn't particularly picturesque.  Although they did have a statue celebrating a local litter pickrer... how fab is that!!!
There was alot of snow - and lots of snow ploughs.... there were quite heavy snow showers - minus 3 degrees - we definetly felt like we were in the Arctic Circle. 
The snow was so heavy it became impossible to see the mountains surrounding the town. 
We mooched around...Dr Fred found a climbing wall... At this point we turned back down the main street and back to coffee and cake on the ship. 
We had a slow lazy aftrnoon and in the evening the 'official' stargazing was cancelled due to cloudy weather and unsafe deck conditions - we did the scale of the planets down the Lido deck but really people werent that interested

- they were baying for northern lights!!  ...but there were gaps in the clouds and sure enough some faint Aurora.  There wasnt much colour to it with the naked eye but some people got some quite good photos.... not me, I'm afraid, my camera just wont do it!!!  We were in and out on deck until about 1.00 am hoping the faint glow would expand into something more colourful - but the snow kept starting up and eventually  Dr Fred called it a night. 
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  1. Caroline Mackay23 March 2025 at 21:44

    Ohh... Love the statue to the litter picker 😍 I'm off to a conference in Leeds on Tuesday evening... About litter picking!!! 😅 Rock and roll baby!!! 😂 And loving the vast quantities of snow, obvs!!! ❄️⛄❄️

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