Svalbard Hostel

... and have a very brief introduction into driving a snowmobile. We left at 9.45am for a 10 hour trip to the east coast of Svalbard and back. S was given a few chances to get up to speed for the trip but the dogsled fall left her low on confidence and ...

... that a lot of them had changed their plans for the weekend after having heard about the wonderful and extremely rare warm weather in Svalbard!   As we drifted along the ocean in the midst of what seemed to be a sheet of blue satin on the ground with ...

... hotel.  Nothing special, but easy.  On Sunday I flew to Longyearbyen which is the main settlement on the Island of Svalbard above the Arctic Circle.  It was a beautiful day and at one point the pilot announced that we were passing by Bear ...

... and we talked a lot about football. Of particular interest to me was a Finnish guy who'd just had two weeks in Svalbard and seen thirteen polar bears, although he was more enthusiastic about the birdlife on the archipelago as he was a Ornithologist. ...

... the station, I had a nice relaxing time enjoying the aforementioned festivities, and organising myself ahead of my fast approaching trip to Svalbard. By 'organising' I mean shelling out a lot of money on trips for when I'm there, but it's a once (or ...

Originally, and rather optimistically, I'd planned to travel south through Sweden after my trip to Svalbard. However, it became clear to me a couple of weeks ago that my budget wouldn't stretch that far, and even though I've got the trusty credit card, it ...

... up to midnight to see the 'Midnight Sun' but by now we'd been awake for 22 hours and decided to call it a day. Tromso is very pretty. There is not much to 'see' but nice to wander around.  A flight to Svalbard and Longyearbyen beckons tomorrow! ...

... then had class. After we ate lunch here (there's a shared kitchen) & then went to Polaris Museum.  They had a movie on Svalbard (Norwegian term for Spitsbergen where we're going in 2 days) and it looks great.  I hope to see a walrus or polar ...

... . As it happened, the storm actually cleared the skies, and when I went to bed at 11.30pm, there was bright sunshine coming through my window! As I head north, the nights are going to get shorter and shorter before they become non-existent in ...

... kind of feeling that I've experienced before with the sight of a black bear in Canada, the first glimpse of a glacier in Svalbard, and a brief encounter with a geisha in Japan. Even the ajoshis were being kind to me (although still too loud for my ...

... labour. In this mine the ‘long wall’ system of mining a coal seam was employed, we have seen this before on Svalbard, and, similar to there, the men often worked in very confined spaces.  The machine used to cut the coal from the seam in ...