Finally, some pics....

The town of Longyearbyen: The Northern most populated (over 1000) town in the world. It also has the northern most everything: airport, supermarket, bar, library, atm, etc. It is a harsh place located at 78 degrees North. But it is amazing - friendly people and great atmosphere.

Main Street - Notice the snowmobiles

Main street - 2am...will the sun never set??? (actually not for a bout 5 months)

Longyearbyen is a mining town. The means to move the coal from the mines to the collection site and on to ships? Overhead cable cars.

Sorry the pic is so bad - it is from a moving van at night (well, 11pm) so the sun is up but not super bright.

It was -22 when we arrived in Longyearbyen and the walk across the runway was a brutal shock. After a week at those temps and colder, the walk across the runway to leave was different. No hats, unzipped jackets, etc. What a difference a week makes in getting used to those temps.

Do you ever get a little nervous when flying if there is snow on the runway? If so, this may not be the airport for you. This is a picture of the runway out my window of the plane. While they do plow the snow. My idea of a clean runway and there idea of a clean runway differ just a bit...

It may be hard to see - but the whole town of Longyearbyen. It is just a small port in the middle of the ice. The island chain is 2 hrs North of the Norway mainland by plane. The North Pole is another 2 1/2 - 3 hrs North from here....

Flying back to the mainland of Norway to the city of Tromso. What is very interesting is that we had to go through immigration in Tromso. We were not officially in Norway in Longyearbyen. Since the islands are encased in ice half the year and you could possibly walk from Russia/Greenland/etc to Longyearbyen (and people do - walk, ski, dogsled) there really are no borders. So when you return to the Norway mainland, the plane stops, you get off, go through immigration and get back on the plane.