Friday, July 3, 2015
This was a civilized departure. Reception was not open late
or early for bill settlement. Clay had to drop by several times before he could
pay. I should say here that Hurtigruten never charged us for tips on the Coastal
cruise and there was no tipping information on the Svalbard cruise either. We
noticed the last day or so a couple of tip boxes on the reception desk, so we
put some US dollars in there to tip the guides and the serving staff. There was
no evident housekeeping (though a housekeeper was introduced this morning with
the rest of the staff and crew). I did see her (or some woman) randomly
cleaning public bathrooms. There were a lot of cabins on our deck 2 that did
not have en suite baths. They shared a men’s and women’s toilets and there were
maybe 4 large showers open to the hall. We saw those being cleaned. The first
morning we were off the ship for over 2 hours after breakfast and there was a
card hanging on our doorknob. One side for privacy and one for make up my room.
I had seen some privacy ones out before, so before I left the ship, I put out
please make up my room. That afternoon it was not made up, so we didn’t put the
sign out again and we never saw a cabin being serviced and ours wasn’t. There was
a basket of wet/used towels out in the stairwell along with a cart full of new
towels. Clay said he saw people just going and swapping or taking towels and
offered to do it, but we just got along with what we had. In any event, tipping
has not been the expense we had budgeted for with Hurtigruten.
We placed our luggage in the midship area where we had
picked it up on arrival. Breakfast was at 7:30am. It was the same buffet as
usual. There was a predeparture meeting at 9am. They recapped the cruise and
said they had blogged about it on www.spitsbergentravel.com
(I looked and couldn’t find any daily log of our cruise as they described
though). They gave us each a polar hero certificate for sailing across the 80th
N parallel. The 2 Finnish women who nude bathed in Kongsfjord also got special
certificates. We docked at 10am to find
2 or 3 other small cruise ships in Longyearbyen. We walked off and found our
luggage on the dock and waited for the buses. We were at the Spitsbergen Hotel
by 10:15am and they were not prepared for us even though the itinerary said we’d
be here by 10:30am. Anyway, eventually he unlocked the spa/fitness room on the 1st
floor and had us drop our luggage in there. He told everyone (and had up a
sign) that a baguette lunch would be provided in the lounge after 1pm. He told everyone
that the previous guests did not have to check out before 1pm and our rooms
were not promised until after 3pm. That was fine. Yann, our guide, had
recommended the Spitsbergen Polar Expedition Airship Museum after our visit to
King’s Bay and Ny-Alesund. It was a long walk. About as far apart in
Longyearbyen as 2 places could be and still be walkable, but we had hours. And
it wasn’t straight vertical climbs like the last couple of hikes! So we went.
It cost about $21 for the 2 of us to enter. We spent more than an hour in there
and if we had watched all of the archival video footage that they were playing,
it would have been much longer. On the walk back we went into a shop we hadn’t
reached the first time through and I finally found a long-sleeved t-shirt. It
has a polar bear on it (which will remain a bit of a sore point with me!) and 78
degrees N. We got back after 1pm. Clay used the lobby computer to check in to
our SAS flights tomorrow. We got our baguettes and some water and hot chocolate
and found seats. While Clay was checking us in with SAS, I had gone to the reception
desk and gotten us checked in the room. We were assigned room 106 again! After
we ate, we came back down and got the luggage and moved in. We have some
repacking to do before we can fly. We have a group farewell dinner tonight at
6pm. We have a light breakfast tomorrow morning at 2am. The bus for the airport
leaves at either 2:30am or 2:45am. The flight leaves at 4:40am. It will be a
long day tomorrow. We will have a few free days to recover in Stockholm where
we hope to be reunited with the 2 big suitcases we left there at Freys Hotel
where we will stay again. On July 7, we reboard Marina and the pace picks up
again. As Clay pointed out yesterday, in 3 weeks we’ll be home! It is almost
over!
I will assume that nothing of note will happen between now
and tomorrow and stop here and go ahead and get caught up with publishing the
past few day’s entries.
