Best Eastern Polyarnye Zori Murmansk

... your 30 NOK and let you walk about seeing what a 17-19 century fort looked like. To ensure that no one had to stay overnight on the island, the naval type led folk back to the ship. Vardohus Fort was worth the trip as it is very well preserved. It shoud be as its guns never fired a shot in anger in 250 years.

The fort has an interesting tradition featuring a rowan tree. Every October the garrison carefully packs up the rowan tree and stores it for ...

... through town with our backpacks. We were obviously not from around here. The parks were weedy, the park benches in need of a coat of paint, and all over town unused and unkempt areas overgrown with long grass weeds and stinging nettles.
Our backpacks weighed a ton, even though we emptied half of them, and left it in St Pete's. I suppose it was because of the cold and the fever that we were both running, but hey, we were out to test ourselves. We stocked up on food ...

I have stayed in this town several times and always start in this part of the country when I shall visit my customers in this part of our long country.
The city is very close to the Russian border and you can go on a trip to Murmansk. You also have the possibility to visit Grense Jakobs Elv (the river between Norway and Russia), where you can se beautiful beaches. The temp. is very low and you can't go for a swim unless you like freezing water.

Today we visited in the nearest big city - Kirkenes. Or well, maybe Kirkenes should not be called a city with 6000 inhabitants. The nearest real city is probably Murmansk in Russia. It's only 8 kilometers to Russia from Kirkenes, by the way. We could't cross over since we don't have visas and Mäksä says that the road from Kirkenes to Murmansk is challenging... You can hear lots of Russia in Kirkenes, too: there are many Russians living ...

(Jim) Our Norwegian cruise is over, and we are flying south. We don't even have time to make a quick detour to the Russian border only twenty or so miles away, though some highway signs are double-posted in Russian (Cyrillic characters) and Norwegian (Roman). "Murmansk this way." According to Travelpod, we've traveled only 1% of the world. I think we'll be pretty tired by the time we break 50%, if we ever do.

... from a large distance. This was going to take awhile. Petrol is 40p per litre so we have plenty of time riding around getting lost before we run out of money! Murmansk is one of the larger cities up here. Well the only city up here. I wanna go back to Norway! Roadsigns are non exsistant here. The few that do appear are in script so look nothing like what is written on our maps! Lets see what the rest of the country is like.

... building . After the entrance, an old disco with a lot of bear and vodka everywhere. I did not stay too long as i was quickly surrounded by Russian women (not prostitute) but to more comprehensive: tourist still equal to money. After one hour, I came back to my hotel alone in the desert street surrounded by the massive buildings. The experience till now is quite strong but I guess it was what I was looking for when I've decided to come by here.

Exhausted from the traveling day yesterday, we slept in this morning, getting up just in time to run down to breakfast by 10am. Megan then went back to bed, but I went out to explore the town. I am not sure if I was just being paranoid, but I felt very like I really stood out as a tourist, and in the end was too scared to take any photos, as everyone kept looking at me ...

... then had to sit around for three hours. There was nowhere to leave our bags, so Megan and I took turns exploring the very little town. I found a big frozen river which had tire tracks on it, so I thought must be thick enough for me to walk on, and went for a tentative little walk out on the ice. Finally our it was time to get on our bus. It was a minibus, but luckily it had space at the back to put our bags, and also the only people sharing the ride with us were two Russian ...

... in canada, murmask was built all at once, quickly and deliberately. gulag and all. Russia is a land of paradoxes.we saw nuclear icebreakers, witnessed some "fireworks" near our hotel caused by broken powerlines blowing in the wind, drank beer and watched football in the red pub, complete with soviet propaganda posters and a big old che watching over us, saw many museums, drank a great deal of vodka (think busload of students ...