Not just sitting around in your house, while there is still something to explore out there? Not me! Even not being able to get out of the country at the moment, that doesn’t mean I am not going places.
My plan was to visit the Spiel Essen fair in Germany this weekend and at the same time visiting my parents. Not happening. 10 days of quarantine are not OK for a weekend trip. But I needed some days of work and where to go? The own country has much to offer.
Easy. My bonus points are rotting on the account so I got a flight to Harstad-Evenes. 30 Euros return via Oslo. Deal. Why there? Because I have never been there, it is close to the Lofoten (I was wrong about thatˆˆ) and I just want to go there.
Instead of a nice hotel with breakfast I fund a nice hotel without breakfast, saving me 150 Euros – that is much for 3 breakfasts I can buy at a bakery/shop. Central in Harstad.
To get there I had to rent a car. There the 150 Euros are spent much better. I have some plans doing sightseeing ang geocaching on steroids – in a figure of speech 🙂
I started the 10:30 from my home airport at Molde. 45 minutes to Oslo and a 40 minutes overlay to Harstad-Evernes. Of course in mask, changed boarding procedure. Unfortunately, SAS has stopped giving anybody any service on the plane. A bottle of water and a snack when you fly on the European business class. That is saving in the wrong space imho.
Since we were early in Oslo I had a chance to get a breakfast at the domestic lounge. Not many people here. But happy to could use the offer on my trip down.
Smooth flight an a good landing at Harstad. The ground is covered in SNOW… what… that was not what I wanted. 😀 But Ok. I take it. Since I had to wait for my luggage I went directly to the Europcar counter to get my rental. First there and soon I had the keys. My luggage arrived and I went out, sliding on the icy sidewalk. I got a Citroen Grand C4 – a nice big car but with to many buttons. I had to get used to it – but some try and error and I got everything running.
Instead of going directly to Harstad I opted to find some geocaches. Still trying to get all municipalities in Norway. A long way to go, but a small 50 km detour and I even got Narvik. Working myself towards Harstad this way. It started snowing a bit. I hope this will not be the rest of the weekend.
Before going to the hotel in Harstad I went to the Norges Bokser – 50 caches – a series which I also try to do. Took a outside look at the Trondenes church and then I wanted to take a look at the “Adolf canon” – an old WW II canon that is close by. Google maps showed me the way and suddenly I am standing in front of a big portal with all kinds of warnings and information… this is a military area and visiting only after appointment with a guide in the summer. So no visit for me today. I should have read the Tripadvisor page better.
So one more cache in the neighboring municipality and then to the hotel. I planned my geocaching as always with the cachetur app/homepage. A great tool for geocaching. Recommend to check it out.
I opted for the F2 hotel in the city center. It is half the price of other hotels in the area. Reason is, that they don’t have a reception/staff at the hotel and you get your key code by SMS on the day of arrival. And a breakfast is – as I mentioned – not worth 50 Euros a night. The room is simple, but clean. Single bed, chair, desk, flat screen TV and a small bathroom with shower. All I need.
The bed 
The room 
The bath
It is to early to call it a day so I go to the Grottebadet – the public pool which is under the surface. You have to go down a tunnel to get there. 90 Minutes of swimming and a nice sauna visit before I walk to the hotel. This city has not much to offer (sorry if you are from Harstad). They are building and upgrading stuff, but it could be any other town in Norway.
Dinner time – which means ordering a pizza at Peppe’s, which is connected to the hotel. While they bake the pizza, I get some supplies for breakfast and my long car trip tomorrow. The pizza was Ok and after some Netflix in the evening and making sure all my stuff is charged for the next day I take an early night.