We had breakfast at 6 a.m. on Sunday, August 1, 2010, at our hotel, the Radisson Blu Scandinavia Hotel, in Oslo, Norway. The Svalbard group boarded busses to travel to the airport for our flight to Longyearbyen. Here we were met by members of the Lindblad Expedition Staff and bussed to the Radisson Blu Hotel in Longyearbyen (Svalbard) for lunch. This is a photo of scenery near the hotel that shows an abandoned coal mine along with some of the local topography. Longyearbyen is named after American entrepreneur John Munro Longyear (1860-1922). He was the head of the Arctic Coal Company and founded the town and a neighboring coal mine, the first large mine on Svalbard. Mining is still a big business here, and the roadsides and mountainsides are littered with mines (see photo for close-up) and their equipment. Temperatures were in the 40's with partly cloudy skies.