Day 1: Our travel to Svalbard began at the ILM airport with the first of 5 (pretty exhausting) flights to get to our destination. For a little over 20 hours, the team was jumping from plane to plane to get to the ship that is still anchored in Svalbard. Navigating five different airports was a feat, but there is little our team can’t handle (except maybe the Newark airport). Though our flight across the Atlantic was almost eight hours, we had a pretty short night as we flew to Oslo. During that flight, we celebrated Dave’s birthday in the air with an improvised birthday cake muffin thanks to SAS (Happy Birthday Dave!). The next two flights had great views of the Norwegian landscape and the Svalbard archipelago, which was absolutely unforgettable; Blue skies and white snow-covered mountains and glaciers. The plane trips gave us a little more prep time, reviewing, and some much-needed sleep (whenever we got the chance).
Day 2: The second day of our journey began with our last flight landing in Svalbard and a short bus trip to the port, not too far from the airport. We were picked up by zodiac from the port in a small boat (perhaps too small for 6 people and all their luggage) and delivered to the ship. It didn’t take long for us to settle into our home for the next 2 and a half weeks. We were able to begin to unpack some equipment to be ready to leave Svalbard the next day. The next few hours were spent getting to know the crew and the ship before we were able to shower and relax a bit (thank god). The first night on the ship was a time for most of us to catch up sleep and experience midnight sun for the first time for many of us.
