Christmas vacation with family in Tromsø in many different types of weather 🌧️🌬️❄️✨

During the Christmas holidays, we are spending time with our family and my sister's family in Tromsø 🥰.. We are experiencing a variety of weather conditions, providing us with the full Arctic experience. It starts with warm weather (4-8 degrees above zero) and regular rain that lasts until Christmas. This means we have an easy trip from Finnsnes to Tromsø and wet days around Christmas with rapidly melting snow and treacherous slippery patches where pedestrians can easily slip without spikes. The days after Christmas are very windy (up to hurricane force in the surrounding area, but fortunately not in the port of Tromsø), temperatures drop, and it snows heavily. This makes the world beautiful and white again. New Year's Eve and New Year's Day are two beautiful clear days, but also very cold. During the return trip to Finnsnes on January 2, it snows and is also very cold, with a surprise at the end; more about that later. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

We leave Finnsnes early, while it is still dark, but the radar and thermal camera help us navigate. After six hours of sailing, we find a good spot in the harbor of Tromsø, surrounded by many large fishing boats and a few other sailboats. There is little activity on the other boats. With the lights in our mast, we end up in many photos taken by tourists 🤭.
The three days before our daughters arrive, we get things ready. We pick up the car from a friend of Jera's 🇩🇰 and look for a good and cheap parking spot. That's not so easy, but Toine manages it in the end after doing some thorough research. It's a half-hour walk or 10 minutes by bus. Toine usually takes care of picking up and returning the car, so he's never been on the bus as often as he has these past two weeks 😎. Incidentally, the bus system in Tromsø is very good.

On Friday evening, December 19, we pick up Eline and Marinthe from the airport; it's so wonderful to see each other again 🤗🥰. Due to the rainy weather, we spend a relatively large amount of time indoors in the boat, but that's okay, because we have plenty to talk about and it's very cozy. We celebrate a belated Sinterklaas with a gift and a poem and celebrate our 60th birthdays early 🍾🥂🎉. We occasionally take a walk through the town and drive to Ersfjordbotn and Sommarøy for a day. On Boxing Day, the four of us walk up an icy path to Fjellheisen (400 m high) with a beautiful view of Tromsø and take the cable car back down. Descending on our own is not really advisable with so much ice. One evening, we enjoy a cozy dinner with Paul and Marieke on their boat in the northern harbor of Tromsø while Inge and her family recover from the whale watching tour (see later in Inge's blog).

The rest of this blog was written by Inge 🥰 ….

Suddenly, the time had come: the long-awaited Christmas family reunion in the far north! On Tuesday, December 23, Mark, Tess, Merel, and I flew to Tromsø. Eline and Marinthe had already been there for a few days, and on December 25, Luc and his girlfriend Femke joined us. So, it was a Christmas dinner for ten! 

No, we're not all camping out on the boat, but in a wonderfully spacious and comfortable house just outside Tromsø, which we found and booked a year ago. We'll be staying here for ten nights. Toine, Mira, and the girls are sleeping on the SeaQuest in the harbor in the middle of town, but are happy to retreat to our accommodation for games, Christmas movies, meals, and the northern lights. 

Ondanks de slechte weersvoorspelling (temperaturen ruim boven nul, veel bewolking, regen en wind) worden we de eerste avond meteen getrakteerd op een magisch noorderlicht. Vanuit het vliegtuig zien we al de eerste groene strepen. Een paar uur later, net een beetje ingericht en genietend van Mira’s spaghetti, roept Eline ons om de haverklap naar buiten. Vanaf ons eigen balkon zien we de lucht steeds groener kleuren, de hemel breekt open en niet veel later danst het wit-groen-roze-paarse noorderlicht boven onze hoofden. We hebben op dat moment nog geen idee dat dit extreem bijzonder is. De aurora borealis is vaak te zien in dit gebied, maar zelden zo uitbundig als vanavond. We staan er verrukt naar te kijken en maken allemaal dezelfde foto’s en filmpjes.

On December 24, we do our last Christmas shopping and go sightseeing in two cars, including a trip to a viewpoint overlooking a beautiful fjord. We are not disappointed by the amount of daylight; between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., you can really do something. Because we walk a little further than the rest (read: groups of Asians in white long coats and matching earmuffs and snow boots), we take the best photos and undoubtedly appear in most of their selfies. The wind has picked up considerably in the meantime, and a (snow)storm is forecast for the coming days. We cook together in our house and watch a hilarious Christmas movie about an Indian man who is introduced to the most bizarre and rigid Norwegian Christmas traditions by his girlfriend's family. 

We spend most of Christmas Day at home. Mira and Marinthe prepare a delicious Christmas dinner, including reindeer stew, a trio of Norwegian salmon, and Eton Mess. Delicious and super cozy! We play Hitster, Codenames, and a very funny and extensive Christmas quiz that Tess has prepared. Now we know that Merel and Marinthe share the same biggest source of irritation (“people who don't keep walking”), that the phobias within the family are quite similar, and that the favorite number (song) of jokers Luc and Toine is “Six-Seven.”  

After Christmas, it does indeed snow and blow quite heavily. Most of the time, the snowflakes fall horizontally. We entertain ourselves in and around Tromsø with short walks, a visit to the Polaria museum, and shoveling snow. A visit to the floating sauna in the middle of the harbor, 50 meters from the SeaQuest, is great fun. Even the skeptics among us enjoy it; we all warm up nicely and cool off in the ice-cold (4.8°) water. A great afternoon!

The fact that we—unlike Mira and Toine—do not have sea legs becomes painfully clear when we have a drink on the SeaQuest. Even floating in the harbor makes us seasick. But, at our defence: It's still stormy, and it's choppier and bumpier than usual.

On December 28, Eline and Marinthe fly to London to celebrate New Year's Eve with the boys. Fortunately, we still have a few days left and make a number of fun trips, including to a Sami reindeer camp. It is still snowing and windy, and the temperature has now dropped well below freezing. These are truly arctic conditions. Our fingers are freezing off just taking one photo of the reindeer!

We had booked a whale and orca safari months ago for December 30. On a fast catamaran with an observation deck, to the bay near Skjervoy where Mira and Toine had previously been with their own boat. Perfect timing, because the wind had died down a bit. Or so we thought. But after two hours on the water—with Mark looking green, Tess scared, and the rest of us “getting some fresh air” on deck—the captain suddenly decided the waves were too high and turned back. Even via an alternative route, we couldn't reach the whales. We turned back for good and the safari was canceled. 

Toine already knows that other boats are continuing on their way. On his boat tracker, he can see them all clustered together, undoubtedly near whales. Apparently, there is something about our boat that makes the crew afraid to go out. Too bad. But not for us wimps... We are going back home and, thanks to Toine, we successfully request a refund. We didn't see any whales, but we did have an Arctic experience on a dancing ship.

On New Year's Eve, Toine turns 60. Congratulations! During the day, we take a beautiful walk, climbing 400 meters via the Sherpa stairs to the viewpoint above Tromsø. With spikes under our feet, it's great fun and easy to do, even downhill. It's completely clear, and we enjoy the effort, the view, and the blue-pink skies. In the evening, we celebrate Toine's birthday and New Year's Eve with games, snacks, a few fireworks from the neighbors, and hooray: the northern lights again. Less spectacular than the week before, but the first time for Luc and Femke and still very beautiful!

New Year's Day is also cold and clear: ideal for a beautiful last trip to the island of Sommarøy. The drive there is already very beautiful and on the way we reach -21 degrees. We bravely take a short walk, take some more beautiful pictures, and warm up a little with hot chocolate before driving back. After a pleasant last evening—with more beautiful northern lights!—our stay comes to an end. On Friday, January 2, we fly back home, and Mira and Toine sail through yet another snowstorm to their permanent berth in Finnsnes. We are taking the winter weather home with us, so that will be an adventure in itself. The Netherlands is now also covered in snow – and we are a little less prepared for that here...

But none of that matters. We are safely home, looking back on ten fantastic days and having made precious memories. Christmas in the Bahamas next year? We'll see. 

Here's to new adventures, Mira and Toine, and a happy 2026 to everyone reading this!

This last part of the blog is again by me (Mira) ...

So on January 2, we all head back “home.” Eline flies back to Eindhoven with Jonas and is the first to arrive home. Inge and her family fly back, but get stranded in Copenhagen because their flight to Amsterdam has been canceled. They rent a van and drive through the night. As a result, they are the last to arrive home the next morning. We leave Tromsø at 11 a.m. after spending an hour clearing the snow off the boat and thawing the frozen lines with a bucket of hot water 🤔. It snows regularly along the way and visibility is poor because the cockpit windows keep freezing. With the radar on, regularly scraping ice off the windows and occasionally looking outside the cockpit tent, it's manageable. With the cockpit tent up and the heating on, we are nice and warm. So far so good... until halfway there, we receive a call from Daniël and Lars informing us that the harbor in Finnsnes is frozen and our berth is inaccessible. Lars calls back a little later and suggests that we moor at the end of the first jetty (closest to the harbor entrance). Lars hangs two fans in the water at that jetty to melt the ice. The Jera 🇩🇰 had already cleared the snow from our own jetty and helps Lars clear the snow and ice from the other jetty. At 5 p.m., we sail into the harbor and then we have to ‘break’ through the last 10 meters of approximately 15 cm thick (but fairly brittle) ice. We do this very carefully and fortunately it goes very well! What an adventure... and how happy we are when we are safely moored. We toast our arrival together with the Jera with the remaining bottle of champagne 🥂🍾.

We also look back on fantastic days together in Tromsø 🥰. We are very happy that everyone enjoyed to spend Christmas in the Arctic. And indeed, the question of where we will be next year for Christmas. In any case, somewhere warmer ☺️🤭..

We don't know when the ice in the harbor will have melted enough for us to move to our own spot (at the red arrow above). Temperatures will remain at -8 to -10 degrees Celsius for the next week, so it will be a while yet. Oh well, we're fine here and luckily we can make fresh water with our watermaker. Finally, the extra tent over the boom has arrived (sent by Harald and Madeleine). We install it and it will provide extra protection against the snow 🤗. Only 10 more days until the sun rises above the horizon again ☀️😃. To be honest, we're really looking forward to that ☺️.