Wednesday, February 28th, 2018
Distance covered: 388km
Driving: 9am – 4pm
Weather: Grey day, some snow
Lowest temperature: -2C
Border crossing: none

Our drive across the Lofoten offered amazing views of a “Game of Thrones” winter landscape. The small islands with massive and steep mountains are connected by bridges and tunnels and covered by small hamlets with red and yellow wooden houses.

Fish, and especially massive fish heads, are hanging at long wooden sticks to dry outside and give a final touch of Viking-ness to the overall setting.

Unfortunately, we were to early for the famous Anita Fish Restaurant (opens at 11:00), but we got a great breakfast in Leknes at Huset Kaffeebar. Other teams had recommended it in the BSC-Winter-2018-WhatsApp-group, which was super helpful for the groups with updates on speed controls, whale sightings, blocked roads and calls for help by broken down or stuck cars.

After Croissants and Cappuccino, we were ready for our share of fame. Thanks to Baltic Sea Circle veteran Hinne Thies. We’ve met with the young journalist Vilde Aurora Drevland Klyve (wow, what a name) in the shopping Center of  Svolvaer, who wanted to feature us in next days Lofoten Post:

The next hours presented us with the typical Fjord scenery and some huge bridges and when getting closer to Narvik, several WW II memorials (Battle of Narvik).

Around 5pm we we reached Narvik and our nice hotel with a great view on the town, harbour and fjord.

The town itself is ugly, grey and felt very empty. The war museum was already closed and the best restaurant (from 19, based on trip advisor ratings) closes at 6pm, so we had to hurry up to finally get some fish at “Fiskehallen”. The food was ok, the service very friendly. You had to order at the bar and the cost for food and drinks were pretty high. But to be honest, the 10€ for a pint of beer was still less than what you pay in Dubai and even in many places in Paris.

After dinner the onnly option to have a beer, was the local sports bar, where we watched some live football games, chatted with the Kurdish owner (“I hate Besiktas, I love Galatasaray”) and, thanks to WhatsApp, met with Uwe & Uwe from team “Ambulanz akut”.