Northern Lights Hunt - Part Three

The day was something we had to get through before evening.

Luckily, Tromso is self-aware and knows that its winter tourists suffer the day to await the night.  There's a mix of architecture here, from the classic Scandinavian wooden buildings, painted in bold greens and reds, sat against modern designs like the toblerone-eqsue Arctic Cathedral.

By the harbour is a curious building, which would be a boring set of concrete blocks had they not appeared to have collapsed in the cold arctic wind, creating a fallen dominoes effect. 

You can attach the "World's Most Northernly" accolade to almost every attraction here, so when we entered the dominoes, we were in Polaria, the World's Most Northernly Aquarium. 

This is Loffen, a harbour seal in Polaria

It's quite small for an aquarium, with a focus on the lifecycle of the ocean, from tiny plankton through to polar bears.  Its main attraction are the four seals, two bearded ones and two harbour.  You can walk over, under and through the seal pool, giving an illusion of being surrounded by their play area.  There's no seal "show" at Polaria, but visitors are invited to watch the keepers feed and train them, an activity they do five times a day to keep them mentally and physically stimulated.  It was much more engaging and honest than a display that everyone has seen at every zoo and aquarium explaining the differences between seals and sea lions and giving the animals fake personalities.  This way we were able to see the genuine relationships between the keepers and seals, as well as being amazed by them playing fetch and jumping in the air.

I'm dragging on about the day because unfortunately the night was the same story; strong aurora activity predicted but too cloudy to see.  It continued to snow, though.

There are no polar bears in the arctic
because they are all stuffed
in bars in Tromso