My little weekend on the mainland.

Up here Norway is referred to as the mainland. We are an island, we're governed by Norway, so yes, Norway is our mainland. However it was brought to my attention by my friend Shannon that I make it sound as though it is a ferry ride away when in actuality it is "an ocean away." Some other people shared the same opinion Shannon, so you're not alone.

I was lucky enough to get to spend a weekend away from Longyearbyen and see some trees, pavement, people I didn't recognize, and I got to ride public transit, drink coffee from a cafe I had never been to before, and sit in a car for more than ten minutes of driving. It was exhilarating!

I spent the weekend at Oskar's family's summer cabin in Kjerringvik and we had such an amazing weekend to open the place up for the season. We had blue skies and sunshine and nearly 11 degrees. I couldn't have asked for more. I got to spend time sitting in the hot tub under the stars (we don't have those anymore up here), and sitting in the sunshine with my sleeves rolled up (we can't do that up here yet). I ate good food, and I had fantastic company,  I couldn't have asked for a better weekend.

Oskar and I bought a new camera, so we're hoping to have some really great quality photos from Svalbard for you soon. I was able to play around with it for a little bit while in Norway so here are the first shots from our new camera.

The camera has some really cool functions, I was just playing around with them. This is neat though eh?

Family nap time and this was Ollie's choice of bed.

Not-quite-midnight sun.

On Friday it will be midnight sun for the first time this year but this week has had some amazing sunsets. We're often up and driving around between 10 and 11:30 at night this past week because of some work stuff, so it's been awesome to see the last few sunsets before it stays up all summer.

It seems like Oskar doesn't mind the light, but even with tin foil on our window and dark curtains I was still having problems sleeping. So the other week while Oskar was away, I covered all the wholes in the foil on our window and I plan to make our curtains thicker. That should make our bedroom a nice dark cave to sleep in!

These were taken between 11 and 11:45 the other night. It's so very gorgeous.

Vårsolbukta for Easter

So, here we are again... Back in town after yet another wonderful adventure, and once again, along with our friend Henning who came for a easter visit from Norway. This time to our new apartment, where we actually have a guest bedroom!

We have been planning a week long ski/snowmobile trip with Henning since the last trip we were on together this summer. We were originally thinking of tenting it, but as luck has it, a few days before Henning arrived the lottery for the cabins that are out for borrowing was up, and we got a cabin for the second part of easter. This meaning, we didn't need to take turns sitting polar bear watch during the night, and basically making sleeping arrangements a whole lot easier. With Jessica getting sick the day before we were leaving town, it was extra nice to know that we would be able to get a weeks worh of good night sleeps.

We had never been to the cabin before, and it was an exciting trip in crappy, windy, cold weather to get there, over glaciers and sea ice, in prime polar bear territory, with sledges stretched to the limit of their weight capacity. We ended up teaming up with another group we met half way there, thinking we could just follow them (they were going to a cabin close to the one we were going to) but instead it ended up beeing them following us. I can easily say it was the best snowmobile trip of my life. We had so many if's and maybees before we went, and the weather was constantly keeping us on edge wether or not we should turn back. But sea ice after sea ice crossing, glacier after glacier crossing we were making our way slowly towards our goal (we drove 140 km, not at top speeds I might add). Only a few kilometres from the cabin, the wind picked up and it was so strong it was actually hard to sit on the snowmobile. Just as we were coming through the last morraine, only a couple kilometres away, our snowmobile turned on us, screaming for gas and cooling fluid (filling gas from a jerrycan in 17m/s wind is harder than you think).

We spent a total of 4 nights in the cabin, touring on skis around the cabin, climbing mountains and sunbathing in snowsuits during the day, eating great food, drinking wine and hanging out with our neighbours at night. Weirdly enough, there was a cabin only 300 meters away. Apart from them the closest people were aprox. 100km away at Isfjord radio.

On our way home, we stopped by Isfjord Radio to say hi to our friends, drink coffee and listen to the sound of a flushing toilet! It was a fantastic way to end the trip, although you always feel a little strange sitting in your wool underwear with your dirty hair, drinking coffee in a beautiful lounge!

The next day Henning came with me to work, transporting 500 kg of food and wine to Isfjord Radio, we got to spend the night and as payment we got a free 7 course dinner with wine from Huset (thanks!!!).

Once again we had an awesome trip with, and enjoyed very much Hennings' company. While he was here this time we are already started planning our next adventure; sailing down the swedish coast for a week. Can't wait for summer!

Finally we made it to our humble cabin, "Camp Millar" i Vårsolbukta (Springsun bay)

Found a great place for taking a morning swim... if anyone had wanted to take one...

Arctic fun...

Great skiing down a 50' gulley. In the background you can see the Birkeland Peninsula. (best looking peninsula i have ever seen!)

Finally reached the summit, after 700 meters of vertical hiking with our skis on our backs.

Our view from the summit... the mountain you see in the background is where we ended up going the day after.

Jessica enjoying the evening sun

Amazing views everywhere we looked.

On easter morning we took off and built ourselves a good old snow couch, and took some walks from there to the surrounding summits.

With high fever and a really bad cough, Jessica made it to the summit.

Any single ladies out there, on the summits, looking for a hunk?

Pleasant return coming back home to our little town

A little winter video

So, a long dark winter is almost over, and everyone in town are waiting for the sun these days... The sun came over the horizon on feb. 18th, but doesn't hit town until march 8th, that meaning that if you leave town, climb a mountain or go on a snowmobile trip, you might get to see it sooner.
Although there is no sun, we have hours of light during the day now... It's so beautiful. (Imagine a 3 week long sunrise!!)
Here's a little video we've made, with pictures from this winter, both dark and light - time.
We've had 2 longish trips already, first to Isfjord Radio (100km south west of town), a luxury hotel in the middle of nowhere. Then to Mohnbukta (100 km north east of town) A more primitive cabin/shed in the middle of nowhere.
We haven't seen any polar bears yet, but we saw a lot of tracks in Mohnbukta.
I also went on a 3 day trip with my friend Victor, first night in a cabin, then second night at Isfjord Radio. Great trip with lots of good food, 15 bottles of wine and great drinks.
i had to post the video on Youtube, so press the link below.
-Oskar-

WINTER VIDEO 12-13.

Our Mainland Vacation

So I know it's been forever since we posted anything but let us just fill you in :)

We had such a great Christmas vacation. It was the first time in 5 months that we were able to leave our small city and see people we didn't recognize, so that was a plus! Mostly the best thing about the trip down was that we were able to spend lots of time with family and friends. And of course see some sunshine.

We went straight to Lier after arriving in Norway to meet little Mia. She was only a couple weeks old when we first met her and so super cute. As always Oliver had the warmest welcome for us with lots of running and screaming and scaring of each other. It's a great bedtime routine we tried to instill while we were down :) I'm sure his parents appreciated that.

A few days after we arrived my sister Steph and her family came to join us in Norway for Christmas. It was so great to get to see them again and play with Jack! Who has a mean slap shot I must add. We all stayed in Oslo at Oskar's sister's place, and it was really fun to be a tourist for a few days. Julie was unfortunately a little sick while we were there so she and Jack only got a couple days of playing together in. But Jack was really into all of her toys including the play kitchen. Although he kept trying to fix the sink plumbing instead of cook some food. :) He didn't like the talking James Brown or George W Bush, but can you really blame him?

Christmas day was spent first opening presents and eating chocolates in Oslo and then later opening presents and eating chocolates in Lier! We had an enormous dinner with about eight types of meat so I think Steph and Kurt were a little surprised that I'm still vegan in Norway. It was so fantastic to have them come to Norway for Christmas and to get to see them before they were soon heading back to North America (although we didn't know it at the time).

After Christmas Oskar and I spent a couple days in Oslo with our friend Henning. It was so much fun to walk around a big city and have the option of so many coffee shops and so many stores; I could have just window shopped all day. Then we all went back to Lier for New Year's Eve where we drank champagne and had fireworks. Ollie wasn't the biggest fan of fireworks but he came around a little bit towards the end; they can be a little scary if you've never seen them before. Come midnight we stood out on the balcony and watched all of town light fireworks. I have never seen so many in my entire life before! For kilometers you could see them going off everywhere and it was incredibly loud. All around us there was banging and it sounded strangely like a war zone. Of course Oliver wakes up to the thundering of fireworks, it was insane. I had never seen anything like it. Oskar and Henning assured me that this was nothing compared to when fireworks were legal (what??) when they were growing up! It was pretty awesome.

Then came Spain! Yeah.

Oskar and I spent most of the days we were in Spain climbing. It was so much fun to be outside all the time and wear only a t- shirt. It wasn't really that hot if you were walking around in town but when you're sheltered from the wind and standing against a rock face it gets pretty warm. I even got new freckles! We didn't try many new climbs but we did go over a lot from last year and this time I led them instead of Oskar. I can't say enough how amazing it was to be outside and climb in the sunshine like that. It was exactly what I wanted! It was great too to have Oskar's brother, Jan, come join us climbing for a day, hopefully we can do more of that again.

My friend Rebecca from Canada was traveling in Europe for a couple weeks just visiting friends and happened to be in Spain at the same time I was, so we of course planned a visit. It was really great to have a friend come visit and it's always nice to have a little bit of Canada around!

We had a lot of great dinners cooked in the outdoor kitchen, we went to the zoo ( it's a really awesome zoo) and we went on some shopping trips. When I told Erin that Longyearbyen has 2 clothing stores aside from the sports stores, she couldn't believe it. Especially when I mentioned that one of them is a Gant store. It was then understood why we wait to buy socks and underpants and jeans until we come to the mainland. We don't really have the greatest variety and it's all a little pricey :)

We landed in Norway late at night and after a mini Christmas of all the gifts sent from Canada (Merci!) and a quick sleep, Øyvind drove us to the airport. Flying in to Longyearbyen was very beautiful; The blue light had just come back to Longyearbyen the day we were landing so it was much brighter than I had expected. As the plane was starting to descend we were able to see the sun rays just beyond the horizon. It's coming so soon!

 Shovelling snow in Lier.

 Kjerringvik and the hot tub in Kjerringvik :)

 Christmas eve afternoon we tried maybe four places to sit and have a coffee.

Oskar on some crazy climb.

Ollie's lunch!

We went to Valencia one day. We accidentally walked around the entire old town thinking we were going right through it! We went to a market and got some delicious food and then sat outside and watched people. My favourite thing to do!

This is the kids park in Albir, it's so much fun! They even have exercise equipment for adults so that you can work out and watch your kids play.

 Harvesting from the garden! We brought 23kg back to Norway with us. Definitely worth it.

While we were at the zoo we rented some mobility scooters (they are for rent everywhere in Albir) just for fun. But I think the boys were a little embarrassed when they first started driving them.

Thank you everyone for a great Christmas vacation. We're looking forward to seeing everyone again soon!

Much love.