Saturday

[susandennis]

Volleyball played, Elbow Coffeed, Apartment tidied.

A lot of elbow coffee is tedius and snoozeable. Once Richard gets the floor, we're done for. Today, he grabbed it and repeated all of the disaster preparedness stuff we heard a month ago in detail sometimes twice - it was horrid.

But, then, Jim No. 1 piped up. Last week he bored us to tears with a detailed description of his visit to the Nordic Museum in Seattle. This time he brought paper... BUT it was anything but boring. Last week, there was on Nordic country that he couldn't remember he name of. So he had done research.

Svalbard is a country I had never ever heard of! He had printed out the results of his Google search and it was mainly facts and figures. Fortunately my Google has the interesting stuff and my phone gave me the goods to share. It takes one day and 8 hours to get there and airfare is $377. It is illegal to bring cats in but they have a couple there who are grandfathered. One is famous. There is a strict limit on alcohol. Tourists can get a drink if they show their return plane ticket and residents have to have their quota card stamped. There are 5 hotels including a Radisson.

I just ordered dinner and with that, my monthly $400 is down to $2. I will spend that in the bistro tonight when I pick up dinner - bananas or pastries, probably.

The new menus are out for next week and there are some scrumptious looking dinner options.

I think I'll go out and work on the puzzle a little and then TV and crocheting probably til time to go get dinner. Life is good.

Comments

[meowmensteen]

Haha, I've looked at Svalbard on my wall map a few times, but it's the same color as Norway, so I just assumed it was part of Norway. Nope. Why would the map people have two countries right next to each other the same color??? I guess they thought Svalbard was unimportant.

[bibliogirl]

It is part of Norway! But it's kind of a territory within Norway. It's not a separate country all of its own though. (Source: Wikipedia, as I was interested enough to go and look it up)

[rsc]

Kind of like the UK and the Channel Islands, I guess.

[meowmensteen]

Now I'm going to have to look it up to get all my facts straight. Thanks!

[adafrog]

Svalbard is very cool. Also holds a seed depository. If you like horror there's an awesome podcast with a story set there- The White Vault.

[roasted_beets]

There's a young woman named Cecilia Blomdahl who lives on Svalbard and has a youtube channel about her life there with her BF and adorable dog, Grim. Lots of interesting stuff year-round.

[susandennis]

How cool! I just found her. Thank you.

[fauxklore]

I was in Svalbard in June. Other than a small part of Longyearbyen (the capital) you have to have a rifle with you at all times, due to polar bears.

Amazing scenery.

[susandennis]

Yikes!

[msconduct]

I know about Svalbard because I was going to do a private boat trip there (polar bears and all). It was another casualty of Covid, sigh.

[nanila]

My husband's dad used to make regular trips to Svalbard. He was - is - a mathematician specialising in fish population statistics in the North Atlantic. 😄