Vardo, Norway

Here's the geography lesson of the day: For a country that is associated with a shoreline on the Atlantic, it goes quite far to the East. In fact, Vardo - way up on the Arctic Ocean - is the easternmost town in the country. It is more east than St. Petersburg and Istanbul. Only a few trees can stand up to the weather there, and they have special protection from the elements.

Oddly, Vardo has been at the center of some arguments over the fact that the Globus II Radar system is set up there. The West says it is used to monitor space jumk. The Russians think it has other purposes. In 2017 and 2018, they staged air exercises that looked like an attack on the facility, but the drills stopped short of Norwegian air space.

The most interesting structure in the area probably is Vardohus Fortress, which was built in the 1730s. Yes, no fortress has been built on earth north of this one. Its guns have only been used two times, the second of which came against German aircraft in 1940. If you visit, you are greeted by a statue. King Haakon, the man represented in the statue, got his job in 1905 when Norway and Sweden went their separate ways, and he stayed in that position for 52 years. There is a museum on the grounds of the fortress, highlighted by a beam in which King Christian scratched his initials on to the surface in 1599. Other royal visitors have followed the tradition.