BERNA TO THE RESCUE - RICA HOTEL, HONNINGSVAG

After we went to the Nordkapp we came back to Honningsvag dreading the thought of having to find somewhere to sleep without having booked anything. None the less we got back on the Hurtigruten to pick our bags up in storage and for the last time bid farewell to the boat. We felt a little sad because the boat was just awesome… he he he..
Honningsvag isn’t a very big town in winter, there are about 3000 or so permanent residents here but in summer the population quadruples with seasonal workers and thousands of tourist coming here. Talking to the locals, the place sounds like one big party in summer, with the endless sun, warmer weather and thousands of tourist, it sounds like Dubrovnik of the north. There can be over 200,000 people coming to Honningsvag in summer and all visitors come here to visit the Nordkapp and arctic surrounding countryside.
There is a micro brewery in town with it’s own local brew (our tour guide to the Nordkapp was funny when she said, ‘the people in Honningsvag don’t drink much, they only like to drink when the sun sets.’ very amusing). The northern most brewery in continental Europe is back down in Tromso (the Mack brewery) but Honningsvag like to claim that they have the northern most ‘micro’ brewery, go Honningsvag.
The people here are friendly and very helpful, I guess they are use to tourist coming in and out of there town during the year, but I’m not sure many come here in winter time, like us :-)
So, from the boat we headed out to find a place to stay, we end up visiting the brewery for food and something to drink, we saw a sign outside saying Internet so we thought we could log on and find some where to sleep for the night. The internet wasn’t working so we couldn’t log on, luckily for us the locals came to our rescue. The Rica Hotel, which is a hotel chain in Norway, Sweden and Denmark has three hotels here in Honningsvag but in winter only one of them is open.  We called up to find out about room availabilities and prices, the conversation didn’t last very long as the price for a hotel room was way too much…
After having some dinner, I had pizza and B had a chicken taco (yup, pizza and chicken taco’s in the arctic, GOLD!) and having no other options with accommodation, we thought we would try again at the Rica. Success, B worked her magic and got us a discount with the hotel room for the night, thanks to  Steina our soon to become Honningsvagian friend. We had a place to stay in Honningsvag.. Yay!
We arrive at the hotel and we see that the lady B had spoken to on the phone Steina, was the same girl we had met earlier in the day up at the Nordkapp working in the souvenir shop. We where like, ‘man, your everywhere’ and had a laugh. Steina, was really nice she helped us out with accommodation, there was actually only 3 people in the hotel, 5 including us two.
It was all good, we settled into our room which was AWESOME…It was huge, better than the hotel room we stayed in at Tromso, which was in the Thorn Polar Hotel. The thing you gotta love about staying in the north and arctic is that the bathroom floors are heated. It’s awesome, even on the Hurtigruten the bathroom floor in our cabin was heated. Love it!
We had planned a big night out in the town, but the room was so cosy, B passed out on the bed after 5 minutes, and I mad videos… Great day, so glad we found somewhere to sleep, cause it’s freezing outside.
Peace

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