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Nice simple day: Some time for strolling near our hotel in central Oslo. (Found a nice antiquarian bookstore, and checked if he had a good Svalbard map, but, perhaps as well, he did not.
Off to the airport 11:30.
Day went in a relaxed, unhurried way... a little bit of "hurry up and wait", but little "wasted" time or frustrating waits. (The slow line to get passport checked to leave Oslo, go to Svalbard was the "worst" "glitch" in the day. (Svalbard is Norwegian territory, but "special", hence the need to pass immigration, going out and returning.)
Took off from Oslo 14:30. The first sights (from the air) of the land we'd taken such trouble to travel to did not disappoint! Landed Svalbard 15:45.
Quickly, efficiently moved from airport to ship... maybe two miles, if that?... and we were away!
And now we were in the land of the "midnight sun". It was hard, always, to go to bed "by the time", but especially so on this first, exciting evening.
The "midnight sun" is all about sun, not anything to do with "night". 24 hours a day, if you had come up from two weeks in a mine, you would not have been able to say what time it was from the sun. There was no "high noon" or "late afternoon". You could have told the difference with a sextant, but not otherwise. Happily, every cabin had excellent "blackout" curtains, so, once you dragged yourself away from the views, you could create your own little "local night-time".
As we steamed out of Longyearbyen's fjord, an evil looking fog bank lurked a few miles offshore... but it didn't affect us. In fact weather excellent throughout. That's not to say blue skies every (24 hour) day... but "good" weather throughout. And more critical: Calm seas. (I'll do a "topic page" about the weather generally.)
Steaming out of the fjord was very exciting... magnificent hills on either side, the whole adventure ahead of us over the sea we were heading out into at a good clip. (I noted a speed of nearly 15 knots on another day we were cruising.)
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Page WILL BE been tested for compliance with INDUSTRY (not MS-only) standards, using the free, publicly accessible validator at validator.w3.org. Mostly passes. There were two "unknown attributes" in Google Translate and Google+ button code. Sigh.