We booked a holiday with Daina based on the Arctic Combo offering, but extended and personalised to our needs. She could not have been more helpful in the planning of the trip, and her communication throughout was excellent It was a fabulous trip overall, though the weather could have been a bit kinder ;-) The gale force winds made the cruise interesting, but at least the ship made it to Kirkenes, as the previous cruise did not. The weather also caused the cancellation of 3 pre-booked excursions, the refunds for these were handled promptly by Daina. The highlights for both of us were the Long Reindeer Sledding, Feeding and Sami Culture experience in Tromsø and the husky Northern Lights hunt in Kirkenes. For the reindeer excursion, we had an absolutely brilliant Sami guide (Ilya?) who is a law student and really passionate about her culture and the future of her way of life. Our dog musher was a lovely young man from Poland called Maciek (or similar) with a ginger beard - his love for the dogs was palpable, and he was really engaging and informative for the entire excursion. Oh, and the sand pit at the Troll Museum in Tromsø was worth the entry price alone!! We saw the Northern Lights in Tromsø on a trip with Norwegian Travel that we booked independently, and also during the husky hunt in Kirkenes as well as from the Snow Hotel. We independently booked an additional Northern Lights Hunt by minibus from the Snow Hotel for our last night, but this was a real waste of money. We stopped at one dark location beside the fjord, and saw some lights. The sea mist was not ideal, but we did get a few pictures. We then drove about 5-10 minutes down the road to find somewhere to turn around, and were then taken to the Russian border for hot drinks and biscuits. We really did not see the point of this detour, as the location is floodlit, so there was no chance of seeing any further lights from here - it felt like a ruse to run the clock down, and from there, we were taken straight back to the hotel. In all, we were given no more than 15 minutes to look for lights in the entire excursion. We booked a Whale Watching trip from Tromsø Norwegian Travel on MS Rygertroll, which was good, although we had to leave the area early due to an incoming storm front. We did manage to see some humpback whales, but unfortunately no Orca.