We are Arctic bound!
We’ve packed a more-reasonable-than-usual 299.7 pounds of luggage for our ‘brief’ 6 week summer adventure as we fly to Edinburgh, Scotland and then on to Oban.
From there we will board the sailing ship Zuza for a 5 night cruise through the Hebrides to Mull and the Small Islands. Once back on land, we will head to the Isle of Skye before returning to Edinburgh.
We will then catch a charter flight to Longyearbyen – deep within the Arctic Circle – and board Le Lyrial’s Total Solar Eclipse in The Far North to explore Svalbard, Greenland and Iceland with the hope of spotting some Arctic wildlife – though the scenery sounds pretty spectacular too.
After landing in Reykjavik – and having traced a massive triangle across the North Atlantic – we will head to the Westfjords and carry on to Iceland’s central highlands and on to Akureyri before returning home.
And how did we arrive at this particular itinerary, you ask? Excellent question. All great ideas start somewhere, and this one started with my wife saying, “Huh. That’s strange.”
(Scientists will recognize this phrase as one that’s found more discoveries than Eureka! ever will.)
She handed over her phone, upon which she had pulled up a cruise from Ponant Explorations.
We hadn’t heard of Ponant prior to our first expedition cruise, but having gone deeply down the rabbit hole we knew them as a very competent expedition provider – and the operators of the world’s finest luxury icebreaker, the Commandant Charcot.
But this wasn’t just any Ponant cruise – it was a cruise to long-sought Svalbard, plus visits to Eastern Greenland and Iceland. And someone seemed to have dropped a few numbers when pricing it.
“Wait a second…” she added, taking back her phone. “This is going to be in the path of the 2026 lunar eclipse.”
Surprisingly, there was no mention of the that in the cruise itinerary. But how could they possibly forget the eclipse? They had other cruises in the Med that were labelled Total Eclipse cruises. We figured Ponant would figure it out sooner or later – and we hoped later, so that those extra numbers didn’t jump back onto the price tag before we booked.
We played around with pricing, and were again pleasantly surprised to discover we could make Ponant’s lack of solo supplement work in our favour. We could effectively save 25% off the combined booking for myself, my wife and our two children – aged 10 and 13, both veteran explorers at this stage – by booking three of us in one room, and one in the second.
The deal became a steal. We finalized the booking – and within a few weeks the cruise promptly disappeared from Ponant’s website.
“Darn it,” my wife said. “Ponant finally realized that this is an eclipse cruise.”
We kept waiting for an e-mail to the effect of, “Terribly sorry, but we’ve decided to re-list your cruise for a lot more money.” Well, Ponant did re-list for a lot more money – but they also honoured our original booking.
Which brings us to today, little more than two months after our Tasmania to Tokyo trip and less than three weeks since we returned from Club Med Charlevoix – once more load-mastering our vehicle:
This was a tricky one to pack for, as we will also be spending two weeks in Scotland before we depart for Svalbard – and five of those nights will be spent aboard the sailing vessel Zuza. While Ponant will provide us with parkas, we won’t have them in time for the bracing Scotish winds – so we will need to bring our Silversea parkas for that leg.
We also packed wetsuits (2 of them 5mm full body) should we be brave enough to venture into the cold Atlantic waters – perchance to swim with seals?
Then, of course, there’s the camera equipment – oh, the camera equipment:
Specifically, a Nikon 7Zii mirrorless camera, 24 – 200 mm f4-6.3 (all-rounder for hiking / zodiacs); 50 mm f/1.8 (portraits and low-light); 24 mm DX f/1.7 (lightweight lens for hiking / landscapes); 105 mm f/2.8 (macro for tiny objects); 180 – 600 mm f/5.6-6.3 (long range telephoto); 1.4 mm teleconverter (increases the zoom) and a 16.6 stop solar filter for the eclipse itself. Plus the last-minute addition of a tripod.
(If that was a lot of work to read, you should try carrying it… though that is a self-inflicted wound. But we have heard tales of distant spottings of ‘pixel bears’ and want to get the best shots possible.)
Thankfully, no tuxedoes this time – which really does cut back on weight.
But the sailing portion will be done solely with duffle bags, and we’ll have limited cargo room in both the Scottish and Icelandic rental cars – not to mention the baggage limits for our flights from Edinburgh to Paris, and on to Longyearbyen.
There’s also the usual odds and sundry – we always travel with our LifeStraw filter water bottles, and I remembered to bring my ZOLEO satellite communicator so that we can stay in touch when in remote areas. (It pairs to one’s phone to send short e-mails and text messages via satellite.)
And some new items, too – our daughter now has a new travel watercolour set that she’s looking forward to using while aboard Le Lyrial.
Photo Credit: ArtMate – Nomad Watercolour Kit
We’ve heard two different answers for how much our carry on bags can weigh for the charter flight – both 13 pounds and 23 pounds, respectively – so we are simply going to practice our arm curls and hope we can make our bags look light as feathers.
(Or, more likely, practice our wallet curls so that we can pay through the nose once our ruse is discovered.)
With all 299.7 pounds of luggage packed (yes, under 300 pounds!) we headed out for Toronto Pearson airport to board our flight to Edinburgh.
We seem to picked the ideal time to leave Ontario, as massive forest fires have been sending smoke across Manitoba, Ontario, and the Northeastern United States.
How much smoke, you ask? Too much. Way, way too much:
Toronto has the dubious distinction of being the city with the worst air quality in the world
My wife picked up our son from summer camp a day early so that we could make our departure. It was fortuitous timing – the particulate count was over 500 by the time they left. (Anything over 150 is considered unhealthy, while over 300 is outright hazardous.) Unfortunately, it seems his fellow campers will be spending their last full day of camp indoors.
There is one other cloud hanging over our head today, which is this:
There was a time when our inability to finalize check-in would be cause for serious concern – but we’ve been through this before. It’s largely been an artifact of repositioning cruises, when one is flying into Edinburgh but back from another country entirely. Should only require a few extra minutes to set everything in order.
Frequent readers of our missives will know that our electric car – a Taycan Cross Turismo – is often in the shop, and that’s exactly where it is today. They are now replacing the adaptive cruise control system – thankfully under warranty – and have been good about shipping it to and from Toronto as needed and providing us with a loaner in the meantime. So we won’t complain.
But that’s no skin off our nose, as our Mazda CX-90 PHEV is proving to be quite the workhorse. Nor do we have to worry about charging it during the return trip. (And despite the regular highway driving, it’s currently running at roughly 6.7 litres / 100 km, or roughly 35 miles per gallon.)
And so, with the car finally loaded with luggage and children – and with us as checked in as we’re going to get before we speak to an actual human – it’s time to depart for post-apocalyptic Toronto Pearson:
No issues with traffic on the way, and I undergo my usual manoeuvre of dropping my wife and kids with the bags at the airport and then taking the car to Park ‘n’ Fly valet, where they will park the vehicle for the next six weeks for the princely sum of CAD$408.
Having long outgrown the luggage capacity of our previous vehicle – a Honda HRV – we had instead been driven to Pearson in a Cadillac Escalade. Park ‘n’ Fly is definitely a cheaper option, particularly as we had managed almost a CAD$700 discount off the baseline fare of CAD$1,100 – the trick being to book in advance and to hunt for discount codes. I’ve taken to using the paid version of ChatGPT for this, and I’m surprised by how often it’s able to find something.
I had reserved parking before we bought our new car, but I simply needed to let the Park ‘n’ Fly staff know about the change – no issues with them honouring our original pricing.
I have to park off-airport, but I only need to drop the vehicle with the keys in it – no need to hunt for a parking space, hence the ‘valet’ terminology. I narrowly miss a shuttle back to the airport, but the next comes along in 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, my wife and kids have checked our bags and themselves in. The desk agent tells them that I also need to swing by to check in – and then, when I do swing by, the other desk agent doesn’t know why I’m there, as I’m already checked in. Confusing, but better safe than sorry.
We head through the special NEXUS security line – a customs control program between the US and Canada that allows for easier crossing, and which makes airport security faster and less invasive. No need to remove liquids or electronics from our bags, though I do manage to gash my hand on their fancy automated conveyor belt.
We then take the length walk from the D Gates to the E Gates, while the kids ask why we haven’t gone to the Plaza Premium lounge. “We’re going to try something else,” we say, hoping to not yet let slip that we have actually managed to get ourselves upgraded to Business class.
Which means we get to visit the Maple Leaf lounge for Terminal 1, International:
Photo Credit: TorontoPearson.com
We were hoping that we might qualify for the Air Canada Signature Suite, but that is reserved for those who book full-fare business class tickets as opposed to those who wait for last-minute upgrades.
Though in this case, it wasn’t quite a last minute upgrade – Air Canada asked us roughly a week out whether we would be prepared to increase our bid by roughly 20% to just over USD$850 per person in exchange for an instant upgrade. We hem and haw a little, but eventually go for it.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, we prefer longer flights than the short hop to Europe. A 10-12 hour overnight is ideal. It’s enough time to have dinner, get some sleep, wake up, have breakfast, then land. South America is perfect for this – better still, we even land in roughly the same time zone. Europe is brutal – the most you’re getting is four-or-so hours of sleep, and that’s if you skip a meal (or two). So the price – though still steep – seems reasonable if it allows us to maximize sleep on the Edinburgh redeye.
Which brings us to the Maple Leaf lounge – which is pretty good. No line-ups like you often encounter at the Plaza lounge. We serve ourselves a very-tasty-but-poorly-photographed chicken stirfry. You do have to mix your own drinks, but I’ve often waited ages for a bartender at the Plaza lounge. So I won’t complain.
However, the kids are keen on burgers so I head off to Built Custom Burgers. Here I encounter a lengthy line. I try to head to Wahlburgers instead, but access varies and the international zone is currently blocked from entering. So back in the queue I go for a 30 minute wait.
The burgers are fine, I guess.
They taste like the kind of pre-built burgers you’d get from a grocery store. But the kids like them, and this is the only meal they’re likely to get before we land in Edinburgh.
Time passes, and it’s soon time to head to our gate for boarding.
A small mob queues up early, but no one tries to zone-jump. We line up for Zone One, and the kids finally realize that we are in lie-flat seats this trip. Then we are on our way.
Well, mostly – we have to pause at the gate for a while as they sort out some issue, which we later discover is a medical evacuation of one of the early-boarding passengers. Those are tough for all involved, but better if it happens when we’re on the ground so that they can get the care they need – withing re-routing an entire plane to the nearest airport.
We soon reach our seats:
There’s a nice toiletry kit to go with it:
That eye mask means business
The menu this flight:
Despite the initial delay, service is excellent – we get champagne before take-off, hot towels, and soon place our dinner orders. My wife and I pre-ordered the beef shortribs a week ago and are delighted to hear that they will actually be offered, despite their absence from the menu.
I ask for an expedited dinner service, while the kids decline dinner entirely – though our son does ask for a roll.
The only minor hiccough is a dirty pillow case, but a brand-new replacement is proffered minutes later.
Farewell, post-apocalyptic Toronto!
But it’s not long before we leave it all behind:
Drink service begins immediately after we reach altitude, and the hot-towel tray has made its way through the cabin. I start with an Aperol spritz.
Then dinner arrives:
The New Zealand pinot noir is quite good, as is the burrata
Along with the shortribs:
Very tasty – advance ordering pays off!
They even have Air Canada slippers:
Which makes perfect sense for bathroom trips in the middle of the night.
Speaking of which, it’s already past 9:30 pm – or 2:30 am Edinburgh time – so it’s time to get some sleep. I drift off, blissfully ignorant of a last-minute mistake that will thoroughly complicate tomorrow’s trip to Oban.