Prince Albert ll Overview of the cruise and the ship  Links below for details from Ngaire's 6/17/09 Voyage   Landing Reports Cabin Reports What to Wear Overview of the ship and cruise.

Longyearbyen, Spitzbergen,  Svalbard Islands
Longyearbyen is the name of the town, Spitzbergen, is the name of the island and the entire archipelago of islands is named the Svalbard Islands.

The Svalbard Islands are not owned by any country and only Russia and Norway mine the islands.  The area is managed by Norway and the Norwegian government is trying to shut down cruise ships around the archipelago in order to protect the environment. Only 10,000 tourists visit each year, in comparison Antarctica has 47,000 tourists.  There are 5000 polar bears on Spitzbergen Island. 

Wildlife and Polar Bears: This trip was really a little too early for a good chance to see polar bears.  We were only able to make it into one of the prime polar bear areas where we did have a polar bear sighting.  The rest of the polar bear areas were still clogged with sea ice.  As the season progresses more fjords that are good for polar bear sightings will open up. In just the week we were on the ship two more fjords opened up that the next trip will be visiting three fjords in search of the King of the Arctic.   During the season as more fjords open up others will lose all the ice and the bears will move so it will be a constantly changing situation. We spoke with people who had done this trip before a little later in the season and two different couples had seen 20+ polar bears. We only saw one polar bear, seals, whales, and many walrus along with nesting arctic turns and other bird varieties.  However as with anything in nature you can not predict wildlife sightings it depends on the weather conditions and situation you encounter on your trip. Each trip will be different. 

The scenery: Truly spectacular for about 90% of the trip, it was constant. The highlights were many incredible fjords, huge glaciers everywhere, breaking through the ice, getting north of 80 degrees, and the zodiac rides around the icebergs were super. There is a lot of history here with the whaling that took place in the early 1900’s and the remains of that industry are scattered around the islands.  

The Expedition Team and staff: The expedition team was great, experienced and very easy to communicate with during the cruise. They are always around and if you wish you can have a lot of one on one time with the team.  There were not many lectures as the cruise was very busy with two landings a day.  Here I think they could improve with a lecture by one of the naturalist’s staying on board to talk to the group that is still on board and the other group when they return. There was a short presentation at the nightly briefing but they have some great speakers here and we would like to have had more lectures. The information given was clear and concise. They communicated constantly when plans did change and explained why they made the change and what they were doing instead.  Every landing they reminded people to wear waterproof gear and gumboots. The man with the gun was from Longyearben and one of our Polar Bear experts who watches for polar bears during landings. The Staff:  Mostly Filipino but also some Europeans. The bar waitress shown below was from New Zealand and a delight.

The Ship: This is a great little ship that is comfortable, easy to get around with good cabins.  The main rooms are pleasant and spacious. We had a very full ship and never felt crowded.  I found the ship to be in wonderful shape. They have replaced the original carpet with a dark blue that looks wonderful and the woods and décor are all very low key, similar to the look on the other Silversea ships.  I would take this ship again and recommend it without any hesitation. 

The Food: Food is always subjective. I had not anticipated the food would be up to normal Silversea standards on this trip.  They were not far off the mark from what we had on our regular Silversea cruises.  Silversea is adventurous with their food and have a lot of things people love and then things that really miss the mark.  You certainly will find enough things to make you happy.  Our farewell dinner was fantastic – really wonderful Beef Wellington. 

The Passengers: I do not like bilingual cruises and we had both English and German announcements on our trip. Personally I feel there are too many announcements and that is made worse with both languages.  This particular trip had an Austrian group and they were a nice group of people but it is still frustrating to have the two languages, for both the English and German speaking guests.  On the next cruise there is ONE lone On the next cruise there is ONE lone German. This cruise had a group of 60+ Austrians. I am told that if there are over 20 German speaking guests then they plan on doing the two language cruise. Meanwhile the Captain basically said on stage he did not like the dual language situation and everything should be in English. This is still a “work in progress” and I think the dust will settle eventually to either an all English ship or a set percentage of the ship to have German or another language used.  There is no way to know what the situation will be on any one particular cruise.