Ilulissat

It snowed overnight, so the top deck is full of ice now that everyone has trampled on it, but before it was trampled there were some enormous bird footprints! We stopped at Aasiaat this morning, and then at Qeqertersuatsiaat which hasn't had a passenger ship dock for several years and used to be the main town in Greenland as it was the centre of the whale industry. It is also where I'm going in a couple of days and it's going to take all day to get there! The dock was too short, so they had to be creative about where they put the ropes, and then the ropes got stuck in rocks as we were leaving. We saw whales as we were leaving Aasiaat.

Ilulissat is known for being next to the glacier that produces more ice than any other in the world. The bay becomes shallow just past the town, so the icebergs build up - and they are absolutely enormous. I am staying at a guest house, and am the only one. It has a lovely view, and really nice accomodation - it even says it has wifi (the ferry was also supposed to have it, but they ceased to sell wifi years ago because it was too slow and unreliable).

The Ferry

The ferry is much smaller than I expected. The Alaskan Marine Ferry had cars and trucks in the bottom, so each ferry was bigger than this. There is a children's play area, a lounge, a cinema and the eating area. Each day we have had some Greenlandic food at lunch - Narsaq lamb soup, reindeer. I have an enormous room - it is bigger than some motel rooms!

For the first half of the trip there was an Australian couple on board. They started from Ilulissat, went south the entire way, and then north to Nuuk. Now there are a lot of Danes on board - most are a tour group. However the vast majority of the people on board are Greenlandic.

Today we stopped at Kangaamiut where there isn't a dock, so everyone was taken there by a boat  - including a baby and its pram and an elderly person on crutches. The small children were lifted onto the boat, and everyone was wearing life vests (except the people in the other boat from town that trailed the ferry boat as it went to and fro three times).

Then we stopped at Sisimiut from 17:00 until 19:00. The Danish tour group had arranged for the museum to be open. It included the oldest house and the oldest church in Greenland as well as a reconstructed turf winter house. A photographer had taken a number of pictures in 1936. This had been followed by another in 2004, and then they had school children take pictures. The three sets of photographs were exhibited together.

Nuuk

Today we stopped in Nuuk from 7:30 to 20:00. It rained - or, rather, it drizzled. I had several things planned for the day - a visit to the Cultural Centre (closed until noon, and then it was only open for a long queue getting tickets for tonight's blockbuster show, but it had trees outside), a visit to the museum (closed until 13:00), finding a place with wifi (an hour spent at the library which opened at noon, and was inundated with kids), and an idea of trying to see the oldest place on earth.

The museum was fantastic. It is in several historic buildings on the coast, near where the cruise ships arrive. One building houses traditional transport of the Inuits. Another shows Inuit dress in Greenland including four mummies found in northern Greenland. Another shows archeological finds in Greenland - one section on the Vikings, and the other on the various Inuit waves of settlement. This included most of the ruins I have seen, and others as well. In my opinion, the best thing in this part was an original Viking dress (the photo has my shadow over it because it was in darkness and the only light is from behind me). The Inuit section included a boat that was found with most of a settlement which must have suffered a calamity, because everything was found as if the place was still being used, although it was two thousand years ago. There were other buildings and other displays.

You can buy the world’s oldest rock in several gift shops, but not in pebble sized chunks, and it is a bit far away to see. Unfortunately it wasn't until late in the day when I found a place that does fjord cruises for a couple of hours. It was later than I wanted to go, and they won't do them when I get back here because they stop at the end of September.

I wandered around town, going along some of the wooden walkways, and seeing some kids practising soccer.