For hikers, few places in Europe can match Norway. The hikes in Norway are endlessly varied and genuinely world-class, from the fjords of southern Norway, the jagged peaks of the Lofoten Islands, and the remote coastline of Vesterålen and Senja. Alongside the Dolomites and the Swiss Alps, this is one of our absolute favorite places […]
Svalbard. An Arctic playground where there are more polar bears than people, filled with glaciers, the Northern Lights, the midnight sun, and frozen tundra. It may look barren from a distance, but it is filled with arctic wildlife like reindeer, walrus, and polar bears. If you like the idea of exploring the great outdoors, your […]
Longyearbyen is the world’s northernmost city. This is a town where the streets have no names, reindeer wander through town, and there are more snowmobiles than people. If you have plans to visit Svalbard, Longyearbyen is where you will eat, sleep, and fill your time in between arctic adventures. The best thing to do in […]
Do you have big dreams of visiting Svalbard? Then you probably also have the question how much does it cost to visit Svalbard? The short answer: it can be very expensive. We spent four days in Svalbard at the end of June 2018. Here is our Svalbard budget, with a full cost breakdown of flights, […]
One of the biggest questions we had while planning our trip to Svalbard was “what do we pack?” Svalbard is located so far north that it’s easy to assume that it will be ice-cold all year round. Good news! That’s not the case, at least not during the summer months. Even so, we packed an […]
Cruising to Pyramiden, an abandoned Russian mining town near Longyearbyen, was once one of the most popular excursions in Svalbard. Pyramiden was a thriving Soviet coal-mining settlement of over 1,000 people until it was abandoned in 1998, and today it sits frozen in time: a statue of Lenin still watches over the town square, and […]
Svalbard offers a wide range of adventure activites. Ride on a rib boat and search for walrus, kayak in front of an active glacier, or cruise out to an abandoned mining town. For a really cool one day adventure, how about kayaking across Adventfjord and then hiking to the summit of Hiorthfjellet, one of the […]
Does the idea of kayaking in icy waters to get up close to a glacier sound like fun to you? If so, put the Icebreaker excursion with Better Moments on your list of things to do in Svalbard. We had a lot of awesome experiences in Svalbard, and this just may be the best one. […]