SILVERSEA WIND OUT OF TROMSO, NORWAY

**Incredible view out the window of our Titan Airlines plane**

We stood in an incredible line at the Oslo Airport as the Silversea Wind and Silversea Cloud had to check in and load in the Titan charter plane. The line snaked around on itself and we realized they wouldn’t leave until we all were checked in and through security which of course was also a challenge. European airports want every bit of solids, jells, lotions and liquids in a tiny plastic baggie. The lady in front of me had to throw away lipstick as it wouldn’t fit in her liquid bag. Really?

The views out Larkin’s window – she wasn’t happy I had to lean across her – were incredible. All those fjords etc – miles and miles of them. Our ship awaited us in Tromso.

What a lovely day to stand in line and check into the Silversea Wind and our room. Our big bright red jackets were awaiting us to try on. Once again we looked like polar bears this time in red instead of orange (polar bears) in the Antarctic. Arctic kind of means bear and of course Antarctic means no bears except big orange people. Yep that works! As we sailed away the weather stayed lovely and of course throughout the night. On the top of our daily itinerary is said “sun is up 24 hours”. I went up to the library to read when I couldn’t sleep and alas, the sun never set. All my Norwegian relatives were from the land of the midnight sun. 99 days of full sun from April 20th to August 23rd. However only 84 days of polar nights from October 26 to February 15th. No clue why there is a difference. Must be the tilt of the earth. We were now on our sunny way to Svalbard.

Each evening we had recaps as to where we had been and a summary of what was expected the next day. Since we left a day late due to the SAS strike, we were doing one less expedition day in the Svalbard area. We missed the small print deep on the Silversea website that wanted us to “rent” waterproof boots but were able to snag one size up for both Larkin and I and Michael wthl his size 13’s had no issue with extra boots in that size. I did note a few folks never bothered with boots and simply figured out ways to make sure they never got their feet wet when departing the zodiacs. Biosecurity checks with all our potential shoes, pants etc were checked before our first landing. Our first day was just traversing toward Svalbard and a lecture on Svalbard which is midway between Norway and the North Pole at 74 to 81 degrees north.

We slowly sailed by Bear Island as the conditions didn’t allow us to zodiac. We enjoyed both the view of geology and its high cliffs and the view of the bird colonies which are the largest in the Northern Hemisphere. The first map shows our position and the second you can note the small island above and to the right of the e in Google.

On our first day getting into the zodiacs, we went around Trygghamna on zodiacs, had lunch and sailed toward what we thought would be a different area called Alkhornet which happened to be in the same Fjord. Different anchor location, mostly the same views. My boots kept me from walking all the way up but Larkin had exchanged her boots for her hiking boots on land and joined the group to see reindeers in a bog.

We always had our bear guards stationed all around where we would be hiking. We had to stay near our hiking groups for even more protection in larger numbers. Friends in our “red” group, Kip and Jeanine frequently went hiking with us. Often it was just the three of us women enjoying the outings! They were both great hiking and dinner companions!