Saturday - day 15 - Nuuk, Greenland - part 1

We traveled overnight north to the capital of Greenland, Nuuk. It is a city of 20,000, comprising approximately 1/3 of the population of Greenland. The only accesses to Nuuk are by airplane or boat; no roads lead to it from other parts of Greenland. (I think I have read that applies to every city/town in Greenland, that no roads connect them.)

We didn't have a great view of the city from our balcony as the pier was on the starboard side...

... there were a few new build apartments that we could see on the far side of the harbor.

We were meeting Joe and Pat for breakfast, but Carl had ordered room service so he could have coffee soon after he woke up. He also got a "Passion Fruit Yogurt" bowl, consisting of mango, granola, chia seeds, and mint (and yogurt) -- one of the standard offerings on the room service menu.

We met Joe and Pat at the Lido buffet for breakfast, and then met on the pier to head into town.

Joe had researched that we could take a city bus from the city center back to the cruise terminal area for about $2. Holland America was offering a shuttle bus to take passengers from the ship to the city center for $18 per person round trip. It was supposed to be about a 1.5 mile walk from the cruise terminal pier to city center. We decided to walk into town and see about getting tickets at Nuuk Center for the bus to come back (no tap-on/tap-off and no pay online option that we could find for the Nuuk buses).  

We passed by the Kulturhuset Katuaq - Nuuk Cultural Center

We saw this interesting set of steps in the green in front of the cultural center...

At the top it said, "Join - Feel - Jump". We weren't sure what it was talking about... on the other side (if you jumped) was a rock. Pat and I decided that "jump"ing from there would not be wise!

On the side, it indicated that it was something associated with the 2016 Arctic Winter Games.

I looked up more information after getting back to our room. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Arctic_Winter_Games:

The 2016 Arctic Winter Games, officially known with the slogan "Join — Feel — Jump", was a winter multi-sport event which took place in Nuuk, Greenland, between 6–12 March 2016. The elected host city was announced on 14 September 2012 by the Arctic Winter Games International Committee (AWGIC) in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada.

The Arctic Winter Games is the world's largest multisport and cultural event for young people of the Arctic. The Games is an international biennial celebration of circumpolar sports and culture held for a week, each time with a different nation or region as the host. AWG celebrates sports, social interaction and culture. The Games contributes to creating an awareness on cultural diversity, and develops athletes to participate in the competitions with the focus on fair play. The Games binds the Arctic countries together and includes traditional games such as Arctic sports and Dené games.

Around 1,200 athletes from nine teams participated in the games. Around 4,000 people were involved in 2016 Arctic Winter Games, including all competitors and participants in sports and cultural events.

Participants
Nine contingents participated in the 2016 Arctic Winter Games. The amount of athletes sent by each contingent is shown in parentheses in the list below.

• Alaska, United States (241)
• Greenland (120) (host)
• Northern Alberta, Canada (191)
• Northwest Territories, Canada (218)
• Nunavik, Quebec, Canada (57)
• Nunavut, Canada (142)
• Sámi people (31)
• Yamalo-Nenets, Russia (4)
• Yukon, Canada (234)

 I also read some more about the stone that was on the ground beyond the steps (we didn't take a picture of it) -- it seems that it is "Hans Egedes Knælesten" (Hans Egede's kneeling stone) and said to be the place where the missionary Hans Egede preached his first sermons in Greenland.

We were heading to Nuuk Center to see if we could find the place where we could purchase bus tickets, and maybe find some Greenland teeshirts as well.

Nuuk Center was an indoor shopping mall, with probably an office building above it. We didn't find the place to purchase bus tickets, but since we'd just made the walk from the port to the city center and we were still feeling fresh and energetic, we decided to forego getting bus tickets.

Some of the frame buildings across the street from Nuuk Center.

We were walking toward the colonial harbor - on our way, we walked by the Church of our Savior. It had a sign out front asking that we not disturb, so we didn't go in.

There was a hill up the rocks beside the church with a statue on top -- we weren't sure we were interested in going up there, but Carl went up and took pictures...

Looking out to the harbor

You can see some icebergs in the harbor

Church of our Savior and other frame buildings down below

Antennas and radar installation beyond the church

Looking north from the top 

Statue at the top of missionary Hans Egede

Looking back toward Nuuk Center

I took Carl's picture as he was coming down (he is in the teal jacket)

This was a building near the church - note the small triangular dormer-style windows sticking out from the roof...

....more of those small triangular dormer-style windows on this house.

We were heading toward the museum -- saw a sign on the front of this house...

... nope, this is not the museum! (Do you think they get people asking?)

Continuing our walk toward the museum, we saw this art piece down by the water, it is "Havets moder", Mother of the Sea. The way down to get close to it looked a bit slippery, so we didn't get a close-up picture. The information I read indicated that the statue is submerged during high tide.

As we got close to the museum, Joe and Carl were intrigued by these implements...

... and these...

... so they found the information placard to get more information.

Zoomed in on the English description

We were getting very close to the Greenland National Museum -- we were where the little red man is shown on the picture, and the entrance was just up ahead!

More on our visit to Nuuk in another post!

Friday - day 14 - almost Paamiut, Greenland

On Thursday evening just after 10pm, we heard the anchor being deployed and checked the ship's location on our TV -- we were already at the location of our next port, Paamiut, Greenland.

We looked out and we saw small islands all outside our balcony.

We tried watching the port talk for Paamiut on the TV before heading in -- unfortunately, a lot of the recording did not have audio, so we didn't get a lot of information, but travel guide Gage did provide this website that would show the current iceberg distribution: https://www.barentswatch.no/arcticinfo on the video. If you open it in Google Chrome, it should give you an option to translate into English, and you can see how many icebergs are around -- we're currently in the area from Paamiut up to Nuuk, but previously we transited around the southern tip of Greenland, and will be returning to that area in a couple of days.

The tenders were ready to go before 8am, and the sun was shining, but the schedule indicated that the tenders would not be available for returning to the ship until noon, so we decided to wait until after lunch to take a tender into Paamiut.

At lunchtime, Carl ordered a brat and two servings of fries (because I usually eat half of his!) from Dive-In -- his brat was significantly longer than the bun!

An announcement was made that folks had come back to the tender pier early because they were cold, so tenders were bringing people back as well as taking others ashore. Jai, the cruise director, cautioned us to wear warm clothing. 

There was a derelict boat out by one of the islands that we could see from our balcony.

Jai also indicated that there was over an hour wait for a tender to go ashore...

... so we decided to take pictures from our balcony ... and forego going ashore. 

We heard that, not only were there long waits to get onto a tender to go ashore, there were also long waits to get a tender back to the ship -- we were glad that we stayed inside and gave our colds another day to quiet down.

Some icebergs from our balcony...

...another iceberg from our balcony as our ship was leaving its anchorage...

... and yet another as we got further out of the group of islands.

We headed up to the Lido buffet for dinner,

They had suckling pig as one of the entree options. I got a little of it -- I didn't think it was as good as the pulled pork that Carl makes with a pork tenderloin on the smoker.

We went to the theater to hear Britt Lenting -- she did a selection of songs and did a good job. The theater was pretty packed for the early show -- maybe folks were wanting to see the show and then get to bed early.

One last iceberg -- this one taken at about 10:20pm.

Tomorrow, we are scheduled to be at the capital of Greenland, Nuuk, and the ship is to be tied up at the port -- we're looking forward to that! No waiting for tenders!

Thursday - day 13 - Seaday

Our second seaday in a row...

We joined "Coffee with Jai" (the cruise director) - his guest today was Environmental Officer Nick Sarnis.

The Environmental Officer position is a Senior Officer level (just under the Captain). He does not have a staff -- he said that all of the crew works for him, as he identifies how each department needs to implement standards imposed by countries or the Holland America company. 

Some interesting things he shared:

• They collect up waste and manage much of it onboard. On 7 day cruises, they are returning to a home port each week and just offload there. But, on a 28-day cruise like this one, they have to arrange for vendors in different ports who will be able to take waste that cannot be otherwise disposed of.
• Soft food waste (like lettuce, rice, other food) is processed by a biodigester, ground up by peach pits, treated with enzymes - when it is digested down to a juice, it can be released into the sea water (international waters, 12 miles off the coast).
• Hard food waste (like bones, things that cannot be eaten) are dehydrated, crushed into small pieces, ready to compost. Vendors at different ports are able to take this and use it locally.
• Waste water - grey and black water. Goes through waste water treatment, separated - tested to ensure the water is at appropriate levels, and can be discharged into the sea. 
• The crew (cabin stewards, workers in the kitchen areas) sort materials, and then there is a group of people who do additional sorting in the under belly of the ship. They separate out aluminum (compacted), glass (crushed), cardboard (compacted), plastics (shredded). Each of these goes to specific vendors in ports.
• A statistic: they used to calculate that each person created about 1.5kg (3.3 pounds) of food waste per day. They changed the way food is delivered in the buffet (the servers measure out the servings instead of peoples serving themselves) and now the waste is down to 0.37kg (0.8 pounds) per person. While you can go back and get more, as much as you want, this limits the "eyes are bigger than your stomach" issue.
• Drinking water on the ship is from reverse osmosis and distilling seawater; they put minerals back in, and return the extracted salt back into the sea.

It was an interesting talk! 

We had planned to attend a couple of talks -- Carl attended, I decided to go back to the cabin. I'm coughing enough that I don't feel so comfortable being with people. 

He went to one talk by the onboard astrophysicist guest presenter, Tom Vassos. He is specifically onboard due to the solar eclipse coming up next week.

Carl also attended a presentation by a guest presenter, David Perry, who is presenting about ships.

We were meeting up with Joe and Pat in the afternoon to listen to the classical music trio, when there was an announcement about an iceberg off the starboard side...

I headed to an outdoor deck to get pictures -- with the people in front of me (and ship's outdoor light fixture on the left side), you can get an idea of what it looked like at a distance...

... zoomed in a little bit...

... zoomed in more. The announcement said that this one had a hole in it that is sometimes called a "whale cave" -- you can see it near the water line to the right of center.

You can also see that the fog has lifted which is nice. We had about 18 hours of fog, and we knew that there were icebergs in the area. The ship had slowed down quite a lot (from 20+ knots to 12-14 knots).

We've also been told that we will need a skip a stop at Nanortalik as that is in the area that we just passed through where the fog and icebergs are located -- we would need to slow down so much to safely get into the port, that by the time we got there, we would not have much port time. So, they are going to extend the time we have in the port before (Nuuk), and will spend the day cruising through some fjords instead.

We still got to hear the classical music trio playing "music from the movies".

We finished up with dinner in the main dining room and settled in for an earlier-than-normal evening to again try to have success eliminating our colds.

Wednesday - day 12 - Seaday

We would have two sea days as we travel from Iceland to Greenland.

We picked up two "ice pilots" at our last port in Iceland, to help with the navigation as we got close to Greenland. 

On Wednesday, the captain was speeding along so we'd be well along the route before coming to areas where there would potentially be icebergs and fog and where he would want to slow down.

We joined cruise director Jai talking with Staff Captain Simen van der Veen. The staff captain is next in line to the captain, and has responsibility over many departments on the ship.

Next we joined a talk by travel director Gage which gave us some insights into life in Iceland -- cute puffins on the screen...

... but most of his talk addressed living in a place where there are very long days for several months (including 24 hour days), and then very long nights. The talk included recorded interviews with two individuals who live in Iceland -- one a city dweller in Reykjavik (southern Iceland), the other a sheep farmer in the northern part of Iceland. 

Similar things they related: in the long daytimes, it is hard to sleep (the farmer indicated that it is hard for them to get their children to go to bed). The city lady indicated that she has blackout curtains and eye masks to help with sleep.

The farmer lets their sheep go out to higher country to graze during the summer. In September, all of the farmers go to the higher country to retrieve the sheep. They bring them to a common location and then sort them into separate pens so each farmer gets his own herd to return to his farm. He also said that they shear them at this time -- the sheep are primarily grown for meat, but they also have a wool processing facility on their farm. I would guess that the meat sheep are processed for their meat at this point rather than keeping them through the winter, but he didn't say that.

In the winter, the city lady said that she has a daylight light in her home and takes vitamin D and fish oil to help with the difficulties of no sunshine. The farmer said that they use illuminating lights on their foreheads/hats to enable doing their chores around their farm. 

We listened to another lecture by Tony Lee Moral about David Attenborough's Zoo Quest years...

He had a copy of David Attenborough's application letter to the BBC -- David was rejected for an "on-camera" position because his front teeth were too prominent. He got a job working for them behind the scenes, but because the "expert" was not very good in front of the camera, he ended up being an on-camera person for BBC. 

Cruise director Jai did a talk about the history of Holland America Line. It was interesting about their entry into passenger travel, and how Holland America embraced the immigrants looking to travel to America. While other lines carried the immigrants as "steerage", not much more than cargo, Holland America had a "emigrant class" on their ships with cabins and they were actually fed 3 meals a day. I think he said that the Atlantic passage was $10/person (and I think he said all the lines charged the same, but that Holland America did a lot more for the immigrants).

We wrapped up the day listening to singer and pianist Kyle Esplin -- from Scotland, self-taught - everything from ballads to classical to rock'n'roll. The picture shows that we could see him and the "Dam Band" on stage, but also had a good view on the screen of his piano playing.

Fog rolled in at about 6:30pm, and the foghorn started blowing every 2 minutes. We had been cautioned that we might hear it in our cabin as we are very close to the front of the ship, but we don't hear it much in our room at all.