Our ship docked at Svolvær at 9:20 pm, on a quiet Sunday night. We walked out of the terminal, still light out and we first sighted the clock tower of the local Lutheran Church, all brick painted white with 2 operating clocks. Followed the Main Street toward the 7-23 Extra grocery turned into the near residential area and found our reserved AirBNB across from a canal. As we unlocked several large working boats travel passed us, done maybe for the night. In this town at this date sunset is at 12.30 am and sunrise is at 1:40 am, offering only one hour and 20 minutes of night. As we unpacked, another boat left for sea work. The day ends with late watch of the World Cup finals. Another long day.
Not a soul on the streets
Svolvær is located on the island of Austvågøya in the Lofoten archipelago. Lofoten is just above the Arctic Circle, at the 68th northern parallel. It is famous for the midnight sun during summer and Northern Lights from September to April. The archipelago has 4 primary islands in a crescent shape perpendicular to the mainland, the same as our home; Sanibel Island. With this location we feel our journey is changing, visiting the out of the way locations. Back to being travelers, not just on a vacation
To travel the islands, we are renting a car. After a late breakfast, we walked to the rental center a day early to work out conflicts on return dates. We are going to drive to the far southern end of Lofoten Island with other stops in between and then return to Svolvaer. Our problem is the scheduled return time is too early for comfort, as 4 hours needed for the return trip. We calculated possible additional charges for extra hours. Arriving at the rental center we see the garage and office doors are wide open, but no one is home.
We phone and a man answers, “Getting gas for a car, be right there.” Guy arrives calls us over where we inform him of predicament wanting few extra hours. He nods,” if not reserved then no problem.” He played at the computer for a few seconds (for show)?, then said, “you can bring it back any time that last day, in fact I will let you take the car today, a day early, for no extra charges, less work for me tomorrow.” The deal worked out for both sides, no need to over evaluate the motives.
Maybe, we think the guy was afraid we would cancel the car and walk across the street to the competing Avis Rental. We accepted, and now have an older Korean diesel Santa Fe SUV, that we drove off the lot and that works simply fine, with mileage at 287,000 km. LOL.
We drove on the correct side of the road directly to the Tourist Information Center, used the city parking app, and then got expert help with fine tuning our travel and hiking plans.
We then walked around the waterfront and city square, by the church, and a surprisingly interesting but small sculpture garden with 2 pieces. First, there was a full size, painted female hiker walking toward you on the path. She was so lifelike that we both separately declared, “that’s Creepy!” From a distance you think it is a real person either walking or in a frozen stance ready to shift and move. Second, ahead was a bright reflective glass sphere, of elongated oval shape with a viewing hole in the middle. The piece was about 2 stories high and composed of rectangular shaped mirrors. Both items were exceptional. See Photos.
Our go-to dinner on the road
Later this afternoon we will go for an abbreviated easy hike called Linken in Svolvaer, 5.4 km, 2-3 hours. We drive the SUV a short way out of town and parked as directed in the guidebook. We chose the the parking lot of Kiwi supermarket and not the Esso gas station (yes we did). The top point of this little jog is a cellular tower. We walk to the trail head and head up easily until the elevated ascent turns to a steep zig-zag path. We can see the small metropolis and a vista of the mainland, and the surroundings at that height display some beautiful mountains. This was a great hike for us. Back to the Airbnb before it started raining, dinner in with some Netflix, now that world cup is over. More to come later..
