An invasion of tourists

A usual view from our small kitchen window is like that:

If there is suddenly something which look like a new apartment house it's a reason to think to stay inside the house or have a mountain trip. On those kind of days there isn't much fun to be going to the town - there is everywhere thousands of tourists!

This boat is Costa Deliziosa, which is having a capacity to have around 2800 passengers. The ship is 294 m long, so our harbour is looking pretty small when it's laying beside it.

Sometimes cruise ships are coming in strange times, but that doesn't matter. Everything will be open whatever time when there is a big cruise ship on the harbour.

Hiorthhamn

They are ready for a trip. When you're first on the boat you can be quite sure you'll be with.

Hiorthhamn is on the opposite side of Adventfjorden, you can see Longyearbyen on the other side of fjord. Mountains avens were flowering beautifully.

There need to be done something when a survival suit is leaking. It's not that fun to get wet. Plastic bags are holding clothes dry under the survival suit. This is maybe not to safest way to cope with a leaking survival suit, but at least it holds your clothes dry - for a while anyhow.

When a dog is looking like that after a tour, it has been a good tour.

The world where wool rules

The first thing when we arrived in Longyearbyen after our holiday was to find my thin woollen underwear I'm using in summertime. I'm really rarely giving up for my comfortable and cool summerwool!

It was time to be back in "reality" - in Arctic summer. My home is there where my wool is.

The Island of Aphorite

This year we decided to do something totally different on our holiday. We wanted to see some palms!

I'm not too keen on crowded places so we spend a good time looking for a nice little bit smaller place. We found a really nice one on suiting nicely our purpose for a romantic holiday.

One reason we selected that hotel was that they were having a really good training program. We were joining water aerobic, core, crosstraining, pilates and tried even yoga. Now a holiday beside the beaches started to sound kind of interesting. We were having lot of fun - and we were getting better on our Swedish as well. Strangely enough the language we were using mostly at the hotell wasn't English and definitely not Greek but Swedish. But that was actually ok because Swedish isn't that much different from Norwegian.

I got also a change to try scuba diving. I wouldn't ever believe there is kind of aquarium fishes in Mediterranean sea. This picture is taken by the instructor.

My partner isn't that keen on water sports but there is a proof he has touched salty water as well.

We were also having a trip to see little bit around our beautiful island.

Summer in Trondheim

We got the first touch of summer in Tromsø. When we got out of the airplane I looked surprised around: "Oh, look, trees are already getting green". My partner wasn't that impressed. He was thinking it's pretty normal that trees are green in the middle of June...

We started our holiday with spending a long weekend in Trondheim. In Svalbard it's easy to forget how summer is in the mainland, but we got a good taste of it in Trondheim. It's a nice town to visit and it's even better when we can meet our good friends there.

Limited amount of greeness

Sommer is getting also here, but there is very limited amount of greeness outside. Practically none, but amount of snow is getting already distinctly low. This summer I'll be so little at home, that I'm not making any greenery at home either. That feels actually pretty strange - I have been waiting forward so much to start to sow garden again! Instead I made almost a clear-cutting on my forest of yucca-palms. They were getting so high that actually we didn't had much view out of the window. But I didn't cut our dracaea. It has already reached the roof, but I just couldn't do it. Maybe later...

Now, when I'm spending so much time in Svea, I just needed to take some plants with me. It's pretty much cosier on our apartment when there is some green on the window! 

Venus passage

That was the last change for our generations to see Venus passaging over the Sun. It was cloudy at midnight but we were lucky to get a quick view for a little spot on the Sun. Those who were more patient got to see much more when the sky cleared up later. I think that it was really cool there were made a public happening for that rare event.

What ever can happen at work

That we were having a bank holiday didn't make a big difference on our work.

But a flood which made it possible to paddle in the storage made everyday life little bit different.