Somewhere for the weekend... Tromso

WHY GO NOW?

WHY GO NOW?

To see the Northern Lights - and to get some Arctic culture at the Northern Lights music and arts festival, from 23 to 26 January (00 47 7768 9070, www.nordlysfestivalen.no). Norway's northernmost city, Tromso is 300km north of the Arctic Circle and, in January, gets around three hours of not-quite-daylight a day, which makes it an excellent spot for seeing the aurora borealis. If you do, it will be the highlight of your year - huge, phosphorescent sheets billowing across the sky, spinning pink and violet in a cosmological Catherine wheel. And the winter weather is less cold than you might imagine because of the Gulf Stream.

DOWN PAYMENT

You can get a through ticket via Oslo for £296 from London Heathrow, on SAS Scandinavian Airlines (0870 60 727 727, www.scandinavian.net). It travels out on Friday and returns on Monday. Alternatively, you can fly from Birmingham or Edinburgh on Duo (0871 700 0700, www.duo.com), or from Stansted on Norwegian (00 47 6759 3000, www.norwegian.no) - for under £200 return this coming weekend - and connect from there to Tromso on Norwegian for £256 return, although fares can be a lot less than that if you book well in advance. The other option is to book a package. Inntravel, for example, offers three-night breaks in Tromso from £648 per person, including flights, transfers and accommodation (01653 617920, www.inntravel.co.uk).

To get into Tromso from the airport involves navigating terrain that bears an uncanny resemblance to Mordor in The Lord of the Rings - at one point slipping inside a mountain to negotiate a network of underground road tunnels. The Flybuss (00 47 7767 7500, www.tromsbuss.no) takes about 15 minutes and has drop-offs at most of the city-centre hotels, for a fare of NKr60 (£5) return; taxis cost around NKr75 (£6.40) each way.

INSTANT BRIEFING

Tromso is set on an island. It is a small and easily navigable city, centred around a pretty harbour. Walking between any of the main sights won't take more than about 20 minutes and will allow you uninterrupted views of the cable car (closed in winter) and the spectacular iceberg-shaped Arctic cathedral on the far side of the water. In winter, the tourist information office (00 47 7761 0000, www.destinasjontromso.no), at 61-63 Storgata, is open only 10am-4pm on weekdays and is closed altogether at weekends.

REST ASSURED

Accommodation, like most things, is expensive in Norway. To compensate, however, many hotels supply a continuous stream of free coffee, hot chocolate and waffles during the day and a free buffet (often with cold meats, cheeses, bread and soup) in the evening. One such is the cosy, if slightly chain-like, Comfort Hotel With, on the harbour at 35-37 Sjogata (00 47 7768 7000, www.comfortinn.com); double rooms cost from NKr1,180 (£102) per night, including breakfast and all the above. Other options include the architecturally impressive Rica Ishavshotel (00 47 7766 6400, www.rica.no), which bursts, prow-like, from the harbour at 2 Fredrik Langesgatan; doubles start from NKr1,095 (£94). A budget option is the Hotell Nord at 4 Parkgata (00 47 7766 8300, www.hotellnord.no); doubles here start at NKr590 (£50) with shared bathroom, or NKr695 (£60) en suite, including breakfast. For something more rugged, try Tromso Camping (00 47 7763 8037, www.tromsocamping.no), beyond the Arctic cathedral; it has cute little cabins with kitchens from NKr400 (£34) per night, but basic facilities.

MUST SEE

Two polar attractions compete in Tromso. Polaria (00 47 7775 0100, www.polaria.no), at 12 Hjalmar Johansensgata, shows Imax films of Svalbard, further north, and has regular seal-feeding displays in its aquarium. Entrance costs NKr75 (£7); it opens noon-5pm daily. Then there's the Polar Museum (00 47 7768 4373, www.polarmuseum.no), in a lovely old building by the harbour. Most of the information is in Norwegian, but it's still worth a visit, if only to see exhibits about Roald Amundsen and Fridtjof Nansen and some gruesome reminders of how life was traditionally hacked out in the Arctic. Entrance costs NKr43 (£3.70); it opens 11am-3pm daily. The other big attraction is the world's most northern brewery, Mack. A few years ago a microbrewery announced its opening further north with a beer called "Sorry Mack" but Mack still professes to be the most northern brewery proper. You can take a tour of the factory (NKr100, or around £8.50, including a stein of beer), or just sit and sup a glass of 6.5 per cent proof Christmas beer in the on-site pub, Olhallen (00 47 7762 4580, www.olhallen.no). If not the most northern pub, this can surely claim the world's strangest opening hours - 9am-5pm Monday to Friday and 9am-3pm on Saturdays.

MUST BUY

Unless you're into plastic trolls or reindeer pepperami, both of which are plentiful in Tromso, I'd stick to a souvenir six-pack of beautifully labelled Arctic beer from the supermarket (NKr120, or around £10).

MUST EAT

Try Aunegarden, at 29 Sjogatan (00 47 7765 1234). In an old house near the harbour, this is a cosy Norwegian restaurant. In the afternoons people huddle in the front window drinking coffee and eating cake. In the evening, it's a place to fill up on good food - hearty, traditional dishes such as lamb fillets with thyme (NKr225, or £19) and baked halibut with potatoes (NKr189, or £16) - and even better beer. You could also consider Compagniet (00 47 7766 4222), the restaurant and nightclub opposite at 12 Sjogata.

INTO THE NIGHT

For a city of 60,000, Tromso has more than its share of bars: 85 altogether. It is suposedly Norway's Ibiza, and people regularly fly up from Oslo for the wild nightlife (though it's best known abroad as the home of ambient rockers Royksopp). If this is what you're after, a good place to start the evening is Solid, a candlelit bar at 73 Storgata (00 47 7765 0100). But the main attraction here is the Northern Lights, which tend to appear in bursts between 6pm and midnight. You can wander around town looking for a dark corner, but you might have more fun by booking an organised trip with Tromso Villmarkssenter. For NKr390, or around £30, you're taken out of town to wait for the Lights in a traditional Sami tent and plied with hot drinks and cakes (00 47 7769 6002, www.villmarkssenter.no). When there's plenty of snow, the same company also runs daytime dog-sledding trips, from NKr1,190 (£100) per person, including lunch or dinner.