On Sunday morning I've had a ncie routine of getting up and going into town to get breakfast, when I went in yesterday morning the town was more crowed than I have ever seen it.I couldn't understand it because it is generally very quiet in the mornings. Then on my walk back I saw something looming in the bay.

This towering cruise ship was sitting at the dock. I was impressed that it was even able to fit into the bay, and I heard later that it had brought over 3000 people into the town. I also overheard that they had just been on a cruise around most of the islands of Svalbard and that certinaly sounded appealing. It seemed like an odd destination for a cruise but I know I would love to be on it. So I spent the rest of my day walking along a road parallel to the bay and hoping I would get to see it sail off. This road brought me closer to some of the old mining establishments that I had seen from down in town. What I have been told is that all of the mining structures that are still in place from when it began are considered historic now and can not be torn down. Which I think gives a nice feel to Longyearbyen and it is certainly all good history and makes for some good pictures.

These are remnants of the bucket system that they used to use to transport the coal to the main station which is picture below.

Then next to this building is what can only be a museum of some of the history of coal mining here in Longyearbyen, unfortunately it was closed but that was okay by me because the coolest part of the museum was outside.

They unfortunately were not labelled with a year, but it was very interesting to see their original version of the band wagon that I got a drive in earlier on. Then after a nice walk I sat and walked the ship take off. I noticed a couple of funny things the first of which were the people running along the side of the ship.

I guess it is better than a treadmill but still not something I would want to have to do, especially because it was cold on land and being as high up as he is I'm sure it was freezing. The next event happened during the departure of the ship. As they were undoing the ropes that held the ship and dock one of the workers was unable to get one of the ropes undone. So another worker ran out of a building at the other end and at that moment someone happened to be biking by the building he came out of....

He then borrowed the bike and rode down to help out the worker. After which he calmy rode back and handed back the bike and biker promptly left the ship yard. I thought it was a strange series of events but proves just how nice people are here. The departure only became more amusing though. The ship went through its very loud safety instructions and then started to push off. The first thing that made this interesting was the way that a boat of this size could move sideways away from a dock which I didn't know was possible.

it apparently has some kind of motor that is able to shoot a jet of water sideways which propels it away from the dock which I found very interesting. The best part of it all was through this whole process and as it began to move forwards it was projecting opera all across the calm arctic bay. I certainly do not know my opera but this sounded very familiar and I have tried to look for the song but to no success. I am sure that you could hear even down in town, it put a whole new meaning to an "exit" song.