Svalbard - Part 4

03 Jul 2019 . category: Travel . Comments
#Svalbard

Day 4: The Last

This was sadly our last day in Svalbard, with our flight leaving in the afternoon. We got a late start in the morning; first day of the trip we could sleep in! After breakfast and packing, we headed to the Svalbard Museum. It was a fine museum, and we didn’t really have anything else planned that morning, so I’m not sad that we went. But, I do feel like I hit peak museum at around age 16, and every year since then I’ve become a little less tolerant of staring at things in glass boxes. It does have a good mix of information about Svalbard’s geography, human history, and wildlife. There’s also a stuffed polar bear:

and a fake coal miner’s tunnel that I convinced Daniel to experience:

Warning: it’s a little tricky to emerge from, as he found out:

After the museum, we stopped quickly for a sandwich, and then did the ~hour-long walk to the airport. We’d let ourselves miss the shuttle, but it’s scheduled so early that we ended up arriving with enough time, especially given the small size of the Longyearbyen Airport. Who did we run into there? The grumpy Norwegian couple! We just noticed them right as I very maturely threw a packet of Haribo gummies at Michal, perfect timing. Alas, they weren’t seated near us on the plane, so this was our last sighting.

On the tarmac, we watched the arrival of a Norwegian Air plane before taking off for Tromso. Our flight going back stopped there before Oslo, with everyone having to get out to clear passport control and customs before boarding what was then a domestic Norwegian flight. This meant that we did have to enter the Schengen Zone, which I was surprised by as I wasn’t asked for any passport info while booking these flights. This did give me the chance to leave the airport and step on the soil of Norway-proper though! The remainder of the trip back to London was unevenful, though I did get to experience the magic of the e-gates for the second time (they’ve recently opened up to Americans).

Overall Thoughts

This was a fantastic trip that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. I was a little worried that Svalbard was going to be cool only in theory but not in practice, which would’ve been particularly sad given the price of the trip. But it lived up to high expectations, and I think the rest of the group felt similarly.

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