It has been a while since I wrote on the preparations for our trip to the Northern Lights and that is mainly because we are in the quiet period of preparation.
Glacier in Northern Norway
We have planned our itinerary, the deposit on the tour has been paid and accepted, our air tickets have been purchased, we have confirmed our booking for the last week in Southern Spain and we are agreed on how and through which cities we are going to travel from Stockholm to Malaga. It is hard to believe that 6 months from today we shall be in Trondheim, Norway. We get an extra day on board the boat because we will be travelling on Christmas Day. I understand that Christmas on these ships can be quite wonderful.
I contacted Bjarni, our travel agent, as to when we will receive confirmation of bookings in hotels, trains, boats, coaches and the flight from Trondheim to Tromsø. He said that this will only be done once the full amount is paid. This has to be paid no later than 1 month prior to the start of the tour ie 19 November 2015. Well, that was a bit of a surprise as I thought that provisional bookings would be made once the deposit had been paid. We cannot leave off payment to as late as mid-November as getting things such as visas and foreign finance needs proof of bookings for accommodation and forms of travel. We are once again watching the progress of the Rand/Euro exchange rate to work out when will be the best to pay the other half of the tour cost.
What I will be doing over the next few days will be to go to the excellent accommodation booking site of www.booking.com to see what is on offer in each of the cities we plan to pass through on our way to Fuengirola, near Malaga. I will also be looking at train timetables and finding out for which ones we need to make advance bookings. I have already ascertained that we must book a compartment for the train from Narvik to Stockholm as that will be overnight travel – it takes 21 hours!
Mountains around the Costa del Sol
Still also in the process of getting educated about the places we will be visiting and confirming what is the best way to do things when one has just 48 hours in an exciting city. We remind ourselves regularly that whatever we see or do is a new experience and there is no unchangeable plan.
