Longyearbyen

The town, given its location, feels like a typical small town. It has a main high street, pedestrian only, between Vei 500 and Hilmar Rekstens Vei, which has everything you need, an adequately sized COOP supermarket with an excellent selection of fresh food and general items, a post office (to send your polar bear stamped postcards home), bars, restaurants and cafes. Not to mention, there are also some market stalls and a mix of retail shops. 

There are two primary hotels, the Radisson Polar Hotel, which is very conveniently located at the lower end of the town's main thoroughfare, and the Funken Lodge, which is about a 20-minute walk from the town centre and up a light to medium gradient. I stayed at the Lodge, a charming boutique hotel with an excellent restaurant and stunning views of the mountains and town on one side, and the glaciers and rocky terrain on the other. The bar area doubles up as an excellent place to view the local wildlife. I saw Arctic Foxes, Snow Buntings and Svalbard Reindeer while enjoying a Svalbard Pale Ale one day. 

If, like me, you can’t wait to board your expedition ship, or you have disembarked and already miss the ocean, there is a sauna and jetty in the port where you can do the polar plunge and jump in the sauna afterwards. This was great fun. There are also well-organised and guided boat tours that last around 4 hours. I joined one and saw a Beluga Whale Pod, a Minke Whale and a plethora of beautiful seabirds, including those kooky and colourful puffins. 

Just outside Longyearbyen, tucked into the mountainside, lies one of the most secure and important facilities on Earth, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Often referred to as the "Doomsday Vault," it houses more than a million seed samples from nearly every country, preserving the genetic diversity of the world’s crops in the event of global crises such as war, climate change, or disease. While the Seed Vault itself is not open to the public, you can hike or drive to the entrance for a photo of the iconic, icy-lit doorway. It’s a powerful symbol of international cooperation and human resilience, which seems to quietly stand guard over the future of food on a remote Arctic island.