After 4 days on the cruise we jumped off at Harstad at 6 in the morning and found a bus to take us to Narvik.

It was pretty cold when we got off, the coldest it had been so far, you couldnt leave your hands out of pockets for more than a minute before they started to get seriously cold!

We found our little hostel right in the middle of town, great location with everything we needed around us... And a pub literally 10 meters from our door!

We had an idea of what we wanted to do in Narvik and we planned to do it all over the next few days....little did we know we would hit Narvik hard and do it all in under 24 hours haha. We dropped our bags off and went straight to the tourist office to find out the must sees etc.

Food was first and we got told about a great fish place where they sell the days catch and cook up some stuff on the side for lunch so we went their first. They sold lots of different types of fish in strange sauces that neither of us have had before so we asked for a bit of eaсh. There was Whale (which was a first for the both of us), and cod in lots of different ways, ooo and cod tounge! we ate it all and washed it down with a few local beers.

After food we thoght we would try a bit of snowboarding. Adam has done it before but ive never tried so really wanted to give it a go. We spoke to the guy running the slope, tourist season wasnt on so it was just open for the locals to use which was good because there was hardly anyone on the slope so not to bad to learn on so i thought. After speaking to the guy he told us that this slope wasnt the best to learn on as it was hard and fast, more for the advanced skiiers and snowboards....ah well gotta give it a go and learn quick then i suppose.

We got kitted out and then went to the lift... what the hell, we've never seen this type of ski lift before, think its called a T bar and you just get dragged up. looked simple enough... so we thoght. We got ready to get pulled up the slope and then bosh we were off....bloody hell this thing was crazy we were on the same t bar so knocked into each other and both fell down, we didnt want to let go half way up this slope with other people getting pulled up behind us so we just held on laughing like mad men and shouting at each other "dont let go we can do this" you couldnt write this stuff as a comedy if ya tried, it was hilarious, two english guys shouting at eachother getting dragged up the slope, on foot on a snowboard and a knee in the snow sliding all over the place almost going over the edge into the ditch, we were so serious when getting dragged up tell ing each other to hold on but when we got to the top we burst out laughing and for the rest of the night couldnt quite belive how mental we must have looked to the people behind us hahahaha

Anyway, on with the attempt to snowboard. I asked the guy who ran the place if there was any chance to get a quick lesson but he just said that the tourist season is off and in Narvik they try to encourage people to just get on the slopes and give it a go..great one, i didnt mind, ive done wakeboarding and was pretty good so thoght id be able to handle snowboarding..hmmm or not. We had got on the slope and started to attempt to head down, the snow was so compact and fast it was really hard to get a feel for the snow to slow down so we both just started cruising down falling over every 10 meters of so, again we must have looked like mad men to everyone else whizzing past us but it was great fun. I think i need to find a beginner slope and have a quick lesson before attempting what the guy said was an advanced slope! Oo and at the top of the ski slope we got to see some really cool Northern lights, twisting all over place and bright!

We planned to do some proper Northern light watching whilst in Narvik, i checked the websites to see what was happening and apparently there was a bit solar flare and the activity was "Extreme" so we prepared some food and drink and plotted our plan to climb up the mountain behind Narvik to get some great views away from the clights of the town.

We asked how to get up the mountain and the locals thought we were mad doing it at night in the weather butwe explained that we were battle hardened english gentlemen of the finest land in all the world.. yeah anyway, the clmb to the top we were told would take an a few hours so we headed off at 9. It was easy going until the main path stopped, hmmm then it became more of a scamble up a snow covered slope in -20 with no one else around falling chest deep in snow with our faces freezing off. We eventually got to the top, 1003 meters up and prepared to start waiting for the lights. Then the cloud bloody came in didnt it! i was pretty pissed off that we might not get to see anything but then from no where, bosh! massive bright lights came belting over the mountains edge and the for the next 30 mins we were given an incredible show, check the pics!! We heard that the lights were so bright that people in northern england could see them too. It was the brightest they had been for over 10 years, we felt really lucky to have timed it all perfectly to see them in such a great location.

We stayed up the mountain for a while and watched them and to celebrate we attempted to have a beer that we had carried up, what the heck, any liquids that we had in our bag had frozen it was so cold! We managed to have a few sips and then it was just to cold to have your hands out of gloves holding a frozen beer in the wind so we gave up on that idea and carried on taking pictures and saying "wow" a lot.

On the way down we passed the ski slope we were on earlier so we thought of a quicker way down, can you guess how? We pulled out theplastic bags we had and slid down the ski slope to the bottom and saved ourselves 30 mins of walking down the winding path

The next day we did pretty much the same thing and again were lucky to see a second day of amazing lights. We read that that was going to be the last day of high activity so we were really pleased to have seen them in such a great place. On the second night we came a bit more prepared...by that i mean we took big black bin liners this time for the slide back down the ski slope haha

Narvik is suppoed to be really good for snowboarding, a hidden gem apparently but because the tourist season didnt start for a while we only got to experience that one slope. Apart from the snowboarding and norhern lights there wasnt much else to do. we kinda did everything the first day we arrived, we booked 3 nights but only stayed 2 and thought it would be better to spend mroe time over in Kiruna so we left early and caught an early train the following day.

I would recommend to any of you snowboarders to look into going to Narvik, it had lots of slopes and from what we read and got told its awesome when the powder snow is about!