Off The Newfoundland Coast

     We are already off the coast of Newfoundland getting close to St. John's. The weather today remained cool with the fog horn blasting all night. As the day progressed, we could see the ocean again as the fog disappeared and the temperature warmed. We had a 30 minute time fall back last night which resulted in waking up early this morning. We did have time to have breakfast and get to the morning meditation. We had done this with the same cruise director last year. It is a chance to step back and relax before we started the day. Of course zumba followed the relaxation.

    The photo department filmed an entire video based on the Greenland experience. It was

Up To Skywalkers

shown in the Princess theatre. I assume that it will be used to promote the area in the future as this cruise is already on the books for next year and perhaps the year after. I think that Greenland will be the go to area in the future. We were not able to even begin to find a seat as there was a lecture in there before and people simple stayed. The people who saw it said that there was very little on the ports and heavy on the pilot and captain. We went to our favourite seat and had a tea and a sweet.

    We had the ramen noodles again for lunch followed by the Foxtrot dance class. The count is very much like the 2 step which we need to learn! It was a good class and the teacher was extremely competent. The good instructor made the dance enjoyable. We were in the Club Fusion so we did get a seat for a lecture that was billed “The da Vinci Code”. The lecturer is convinced that he unlocked the secrets of the Mona Lisa painting. The entire hour had little to do with the painting except for the start and the end. He did not do a very good job of explaining his points. He kept saying this theory is a fact. We remained skeptical about the whole “secrets” he revealed. He did make some interesting points about things like the similarities of the pyramid like structures around the world. He absolutely did not believe that aliens were involved. For us that ended the day until our evening.

 

At Skywalkers

 We made our way to the elite lounge early enough to enjoy the view from deck 17. That was followed by a Princess theatre show with the singer from the other night. Again she sang songs from pop, broad way and opera . All were excellent. It was Italian night in the dinning room. We had pasta with plenty of garlic! After dinner we dropped by the “Rock and Roll Dance Party” and it was basically the same as we had seen in the past. Tomorrow we will tour St. John's but do not have a detailed plan of what we will do other than get a Tim Horton's coffee. The weather should be sunny! This is our last port of call for this cruise.

Sailing Back To Canada

   We left Greenland last nigh and are headed south to St John's Newfoundland. The entire transit will only be 2 days. We arrive there on Sunday morning. The day is overcast and the waves are up a bit, the temperature is cool (40's) so going outside is probably out. In a few days we may be wishing for this cool weather.

There was a little more to do today but we started with the zumba routine for an hour this morning. After all the hiking we did in the last few days we fell right back into it. Tea with a muffin in the International Cafe served as breakfast. Another store at sea (buy, buy buy) again today. Judy did stop and looked at a diamond ring just because!

    We waited for the pub lunch to clear out then sat with a nice couple from Virginia until they kicked us out. We made it to the dance class where The Jive (East Coast). Actually we did ok with this dance. We did it to Rock and Roll Music. We had a bit of a break before the line dance class where the simple dances prevailed. It was led by the new cruise person onboard. She had the steps to Cupid Shuffle written down. The newest person always gets to do line dancing so there is never a change to what they do!

   We had the Captain's Circle Party in the late afternoon. There are just under 1100 elite aboard. We sat with a couple from Calgary. The most cruised couple have over 1700 days at sea. That is the most that we have ever seen. We did get to the showtime entertainment with an Instrumentalist who we missed the other night. He was a fiddle (violin) player. It was very entertaining. Then of course dinner. We had a filet with giant prawns. One of the bands was playing Country Classic so we dropped in to see what they were playing. It was old country. Then there had a “Dancing With The Stars” type dance party with couples made up of someone from the ship and a passenger. We had never seen it before and it was quite funny; especially the type of dances that they were given (Bollywood, Irish Step, etc.) .

   The internet has been very slow so I have not been able to post all the photos that I would have liked. Email is impossible except in the middle of the night. Sea day tomorrow then Newfoundland.

Hiking Nanortalik

     Nanortalik was the last of our 3 stops in Greenland. By far it is the prettiest in terms of

Nanortalik

scenery. There are mountains all around. Today we were on the second group of hikers which did not start out until noon. It is another 8 mile “strenuous” hike that was originally billed as a 3 hour hike, then moved to 4 hours. With the later start time we were able to see the town of 1300 before we headed out.

       The town itself seemed more prepared to receive cruise ships. We found it better than the bigger towns of the last few days. It was a whaling site in the past and they

in Town

have preserved the buildings from that era. It was quite informative. We did not see many things to buy in town. There were plenty of items made of seal skin and some local arts and crafts. Missing were the “made in China” tourist items!

     Our hike was less than we expected. In fact the previous 2 hikes were much better. Most of the hike took place on flat areas with plenty of crow berry (ground cover) plants. They look like a small blueberry. The guide was from the area but other

On The Mountain

than a few comments about the plants really did not provide much information. Again the level of the guides is not the same as you would see in tourist areas.

    We were disappointed until the last part of the hike when the guide said we could climb the low mountain that we had seen all walk. Only about half of the hikers chose to do that. It took about 25 minutes to reach the top. With better information we could have done all of it on our own as we simply walked through the town to the trail head. The views of the town from the top were excellent and made the entire experience worth while.

Cemetery

There was only 1 dock for the tenders to tie up and so the line up to get back to the ship was long, taking about 1 hour. A glass of wine helped! As we sailed tonight for St John's (2 day sail) we immediately heard the fog horn. The ship is rocking a bit and we expect that to continue.

    Tonight we enjoyed another specialty dining at the Crown Grill Steak restaurant. We do not know why we got this one but after looking at the menu, decided on the steak restaurant rather than the Italian restaurant. The meal was excellent. We had a lobster cake as an appetizer, a french onion soup followed by a filet perfectly cooked. The lava cake Judy had was the best she has had on the ship. We skipped the show (which we had seen before) stopped by the line dancing (Electric Slide type dances) before dinner. A bottle of red wine and some excellent food ended our visit to Greenland. By the time we finished, the only thing going on was a game show. After the walk today it was another turn in early night.

Hiking Qaqortoq – Around the Big Lake

   We made it to southern Greenland to a small town called Qaqortoq. It has a population of about 3000 which means we basically doubled the size of the town. There are around 40 cruise ships that stop here in the summer time. The tourist infrastructure is a bit more developed but it has a long way to go to accommodate a ship of this size. Most tours were a narrated walk through town. We opted for the 8 mile 5 hour walk. We had a very good guide who lives is Switzerland and comes here in the summer. The lake walk is around the fresh water lake that supplies the town with their drinking water. However there is one large hill at the far end of the lake which took about 90 minutes to climb. There was a lot of up and down on the way up but overall we thought that it was not as hard as Nuuk. There were not as much scrambling as in Nuuk. It is really hard to describe the hike and what the landscape looks like. The pictures should help.

 

The Downside

Our guide did a good job of filling in details about the area, something we did not get on the last hike. He knew about the flowers and the landscape and did an excellent job of keeping the group together. One person was very slow and we left him behind with others from the ship. We did a small walk through town but opted to return to the ship as we had not eaten much since our early breakfast. We left at 8:30 and were back on aboard around 3:30. We stopped for afternoon tea to replenish ourselves. After a brief rest, we were off to the early show.

  The main entertainment seemed to come up fast! The entertainment was a vocalist who did a variety of songs from Broadway, Opera and Pop. It was among the better entertainment that we have seen. We could not remember hearing her in the past. One of our missing table mates came back so the 5 of us had a very nice meal. We checked out the specialty restaurants menus as we are going tomorrow. We decided to head to the cabin early as we have another 5 hour hike tomorrow. It is billed as strenuous but the other hikes were billed the same. We shall see.

Foggy Day At Sea

   Since we sailed last night we have been making our way south along the Greenland coast to the southern tip where we will stop at our next 2 ports. The day started very foggy and we would not see land even if we were close enough. As the day went by, the fog cleared and the calm sea got a tad rougher. Again today we did not find a full day of activities. We did hear that there are certain activities that are dictated from head office which would explain all the sales and special Effy events which are held 3 times a day.

We caught the last part of the meditation session. We were early to stake out our spots for zumba. “Zumba people be crazy.” Everyone has a spot and you need to claim it. Of course today 2 people tried to elbow me out but I stood my ground. The session was a bit more structured. After zumba we managed to get a table in the Atrium. That in itself was a feat! Tea and a light breakfast doing a cross word followed by a quick look at the “ongoing” 3 hour onboard outlet sale. Then we had a 45 minute Meringue lesson. Actually we did quite well. The instructor kept adding moves. It was fun.

Down The Hill

 

Up The Hill

 After lunch in the dining room, the rest of the day was followed by non events for us: an art auction, beauty seminars, casino games, karaoke, pop choir, a movie on the upper deck (fat chance), etc. So we watch an in room movie before getting ready for the evening activities. The 6:30 show was a Ventriloquist named Dan Horn. We had seen him before and we recognized the puppets and most of the jokes. It was a good show if you like that type of theatre but if there was something else to do we should have done it. Dinner was good. We are 6 at the table but 1 couple seems to have given up (did we drive them away?) as we have not seen them the last 2 days. We wandered after dinner but the main activity was a game show. We have a big hike tomorrow with and early start. I included 2 pictures from the hike yesterday. The Wi Fi is very iffy and takes forever to log on and upload photos. It should get better as we move south

Hiking Nuuk Greenland

   The day was sunny and bright when we docked in Nuuk. As expected the area is very rocky and the houses are brightly painted – reds, blues, pinks, greens, etc. Our 5 hour hike started at 10 so we had time for a big breakfast. Our tour only had 2 sections (staggered leaving times). We had about 30 on our hike.

   

Nuuk

The hike was not extremely difficult. We were dropped at one end of the town and hiked behind the mountain to the end point near the airport on the other side of town. The photos show the landscape which was unlike anything else we have seen. Of course there are no trees, not even bushes of any sort. The ground was covered mainly with lichens and mosses. There was some colour to the landscape but it was overwhelmed by the grey barren rock. The evidence of glaciation was everywhere with large boulders strewn about. A few flowers were seen the the bog areas. They were similar to what you see in the alpine areas of Canada.

On The Hike

   There were 2 guides, a mother and a young daughter. That is all they were. They simply pointed the way. As a “tour” it lacked greatly. We did not learn a thing about Nuuk, Greenland, the landscape, etc. For example there were blueberries along the way. We learned this from someone on the other tour when we returned back to the ship. Nothing was offered by the young guide. The area is just getting into the tourism business and have not developed a good program. The hike was billed as strenuous. There was one person who could not keep up. The real guide had to stay back with him. It was evident in the first 30 minutes that he was not able to keep up. The group was continually waiting for him after every uphill walk. The final descent was a bit difficult but by the end he was so far behind that he had to go back by taxi after we left. This was after constantly waiting for him after every hill, etc. The result was that we were later than we thought going back to the ship so we decided not to stop in town. We did not have enough time to stay in town. We went to afternoon tea!

Up The Hill

    The town itself had many apartment type of buildings. We did not see one single family type dwelling. We did notice piles of building materials and there were 2 new “high” rise type structures going up. We could not tell what the main type of employment there is in Nook. There were many large containers in the port but we could not tell if they were coming into the port or for export. There were fishing vessels but not many large ones. Considering this is the capital with about 17,000 people in the city, it will be interesting to see what the next 2 stops look like. The next stop has 3000 people and the last stop has 1000.

   We sailed around 6. Some people reported seeing whales but we have not been lucky enough. As we sailed, we could see a number of small grounded icebergs. The weather remains cool but it was very nice all day. We decided to skip the show for a chance to just relax and have a drink. We have a sea day tomorrow. My camera was a bit “wonky”. I think there is a bit of an electronics problem. Still takes pictures but I can't always use the screen. We still have Judy's for backup.

Close To Nook, Greenland

    Tomorrow we are in Nuuk the capital of Greenland. We have slowed to about 12 knots as we made good time getting here. The temperature remains in the low 40's. The outlook for tomorrow is partly cloudy with a high in the low 50's F. We also found out that we will be tied up about a mile from town and not be tendered. We look forward to the hike. There are only 40 people in 2 groups going on this excursion.

 

A Ship

 Last night we had an advance of the clock. We were up in time for Zumba, always a good way to start the day. Tea and a muffin in the atrium was enough of a breakfast. We attended the Ship Life Q and A where 3 senior officers answered questions about the ship i.e. Where does the fresh water come from, what about waste water, fuel, etc., etc. An interesting thing is that the ship has had 2 Greenland pilots aboard (since Sydney). It is a requirement of the laws for the polar region. The pilot was able to fill in some of the details about all 3 ports. In all a very interesting session.

 

Ready For Nook

 We stop for champagne at the Effy store and then went to the ballroom dance class for a session in “The Bachata”. I had never heard of that dance before but now we are experts. Interestingly enough we had a line dance to the music used. We rushed to the pub lunch, then the Clinique store sale. Judy always needs to stock up on these cruises. Those were the main events for the day.

    After watching an in cabin movie, we went down to the Elite lounge for some sushi before rushing off to see Tom Franek the variety piano entertainer that we had seen a few nights ago. Another very good show. Dinner followed. The rest of the evening was spent wandering before an early turn in.