Tuesday - Day 18 - Sea Day

After leaving Greenland, the Captain was making his way on Tuesday to the track of the solar eclipse so we could be in position to see it on Wednesday afternoon.

We were relaxing and attending sessions to educate ourselves...

.... primarily regarding tomorrow's solar eclipse! These were the estimated times, but, the captain did not know precisely where along the path of totality that we would end up finding clear skies, so they were subject to change, but not by much.

The talk was by the onboard astronomer, Tom Vassos, from University of Toronto.

He brought graphics from many sources and was very entertaining. This is a picture of the activity going on on the sun's surface earlier on Tuesday. There are a lot of sun storms / ejections going on during this time very close to solar maximum (solar maximum was during 2025).

Because of the high level of solar activity, we may witness several special activities of the sun while the moon blocks the main part of the sun's light.

Near totality, both going into totality and coming out, we might see the "diamond ring" just before the last light of the sun is extinguished (or just after the first light of the sun is again seen).

Tom Vassos is an interesting character -- entertaining, smart, able to built excitement in folks who are on a solar eclipse cruise, but may not know much about what is about to happen.

Other than Tom's lecture, we relaxed (and ate). We could get used to living like this!

Monday - day 17 - part 2 - Scenic cruising

Part 1 of Monday can be found here: https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2026/08/monday-day-17-part-1-qaqortok.html 

Our captain had told us earlier in the day that we were going to be taking a different route around southern Greenland than the one we had traversed earlier which took us pretty far offshore to avoid icebergs and in which we were in dense fog. Instead, he indicated that we would be going through Prins Christianssund (Prince Christian Sound). When we went to his talk a few days ago, someone had asked about whether we would be going through there as many cruises do, and he said that it was not likely as the sound can be bottled up with icebergs and you may not know until you get nearly to the end, and then there is no place to turn around for a long ways, so you have to back out to go around the other way, losing many hours in the process. But, evidently, he had gotten reports that cruising through Prins Christiansund was an option, it would be shorter, but, unfortunately, it would be mostly at night.

A picture from the items that are provided in our stateroom (extra charges apply if they are consumed -- we do not!). I found it interesting that the Coke can is labeled "For Airline and Maritime Consumption Only".

Monday was "Orange Day", recognizing the House of Orange of The Netherlands, the home country of Holland America. We were encouraged to wear orange (we had gone to a thrift store in Arizona and gotten orange shirts to wear as orange is not a color that we usually wear). There was a special "Dutch Night" dinner in the main dining room where we were able to try various Dutch dishes...

... including Lindt chocolate with the desserts -- Carl got two -- the Lindt tulip as well as a Lindt hot fudge sundae!

While we were in the dining room there was great excitement as we passed a couple of icebergs that looked to be very close (we were on the second deck in the main dining room so closer to the water level than our room on deck 6). We weren't able to get out on deck to see those...

... but after dinner, we went out on the Promenade deck (deck 3), 

... and enjoyed seeing some of the icebergs as we passed...

... unfortunately none particularly close.

The view looking behind the ship of the mountains with fog around them was pretty too!

When we went back inside, it was just about time for the 8:30pm show to start, so we went in to watch another show by the magician. 

Cruise director Jai welcomed us to Orange Night and Showtime -- he was quite the picture in orange! (We've heard him called "Elton Jai" -- seems appropriate!)

After the magician show, we went over to see the Orange Party going on in B.B.Kings Blues club -- we watched for a little while from the deck above. The music was good, but very loud.

We were now in fjords on our way to Prins Christiansund -- the sun was getting low in the sky, just lighting high peaks...

... there were tall peaks on each side of the ship.

We were curving around these mountains, and threading between icebergs and mountains...

...it was simply beautiful ---

... pictures don't do it justice.

We sent back to our cabin, 

... and I noticed something odd when we came to this area of the fjord...

... zooming in, we could see that it was something that looked human-created...

As we kept on looking, we could see rooflines and brightly colored houses -- we were a *long* ways away from any other habitation.

In this picture, you may be able to see lights at a couple of the houses.

I looked on the map to see where we were -- the community was Aappilattoq. Wikipedia says, "The settlement had 86 inhabitants in 2025." If you're interested in more information, the Wikipedia article can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aappilattoq,_Kujalleq

Here's a screen capture I did on Google Maps with our approximate route through this area of Greenland. It looks like I may have left Carl behind somewhere near Aappilattoq, but that's just the last place his phone connected with a geolocator -- I assure you, he is still with me on the ship!

It was getting dark, so we couldn't really enjoy seeing the rest of the transit through Prins Christiansund. The ship turned the front floodlights on, so we did have a pretty good view via the bow camera, but, we were tired, and it was late (we would lose an hour Tuesday 2am), so we opted for sleep rather than seeing more.

What an amazing time we've had in Greenland. I guess we didn't have a lot of expectations, so all we saw and did went beyond anything we were anticipating!

Monday - day 17 - part 1 - Qaqortok

On Monday, we stopped at Qaqortok (ka-KOR-tak), the largest town in southern Greenland with about 3000 residents.

We were anchored out (and tendering in to the port) -- some pictures from the ship...

.... unfortunately not a sunny day...

... pretty colors of houses on the hillside.

Travel guide Gage had given a suggested walking route that we kind-of used as a guide.

Tourist information office in Qaqortoq welcomed us to town

We stopped by the oldest fountain in Greenland, Mindebrønden, finished in 1932. It is said that the fountain depicts whales spouting water out of their blowholes, but it wasn't spouting when we saw it. Carl looked for the on/off switch but did not find it.

Frelserens Kirke (Church of the Savior) -- this is the older church in town. A newer one was built in the 1970s because they needed more room, which we, unfortunately, didn't see.

A brook (river?) running through town

Another view of the church

We like stopping at grocery stores -- and couldn't resist this one -- I read the name as "pissy fit"!

Some of the items we saw in the store... dry cereals (a lot of US brands)...

... snack foods...

... cat food...

I realized that our previous picture of cat food in the grocery store did not show whether there was kitty litter, so I specifically looked for it at this store -- "Kattsand"!

Some of the beverages

While we were at the grocery store, 

...I noticed these two ladies shopping -- their outfits were made up of fuzzy jackets/tops with a wide metallic ribbon at the bottom. The lady on the left also had what looked like hand-sewn sealskin boots.

Our friends, Joe and Pat, had attended a shore excursion sponsored by Holland America, called "Taste of Greenland" where they got to taste some of the local foods. It turned out that their group was meeting in a building next door to Pisiffik and finished up at the time we were passing by, so we joined up with them to walk around the city.

They had heard in their tasting event that Monday was the first day of school for the children in Qaqortoq, so they were having special events at the school, 

...we went over to the school and there was a large gathering of families there...

... it seemed that the administrators (at the top of the steps) were making announcements and maybe giving awards of some kind - lots of cheering and tossing out of hard candies.

Joe and Pat had heard that this was the only high school in the southern part of Greenland, so it includes boarding facilities for children whose families live in the southern part of the country, but not in Qaqortoq.

We walked a little further uphill to the "great lake". Joe said that he heard that, since the areas were populated and named by nomadic peoples, there are a lot of "great lakes" -- as any lake they saw at a new location was that location's "great lake".

The outflow of the lake is that brook / river that we had seen earlier -- and you can see other houses up the hillside in the distance, near the harbor.

We were told that, originally, different colors of buildings indicated different services -- red would be churches, schools, shops, homes of priests or teachers; yellow would be hospitals, doctors, and healthcare workers; green would be radio and telecommunication buildings; blue would be fish factories and industrial plants; and black would be police stations. Now, however, people can paint their homes any color they want. Bright colors help people spot buildings easily during heavy snow and dark winters.

We imagined (made up a story) that the towns tried to keep the colors diverse -- so if you went in to the local "Lowes" or "Home Depot", and you asked for blue exterior paint, the shopkeeper would ask your address, look up the colors of your neighbors' houses, and maybe say, "Oh, I'm sorry sir, there are already 3 blue houses around you. May I interest you in a nice green or yellow?" 

Some poppies and lupine near the edge of the lake

I was showing Pat and Joe the picture of the map that Gage had provided that we were attempting to follow. Note that they have mosquito nets over their heads. I am not sure that there were mosquitos, but at times, there were overly friendly bugs who liked to fly in your face. We had brought the head netting too, but didn't find them annoying enough to be worth putting on the head nets.

Joe and Pat stopped in the museum, and we kept on going. One of the things we had been told about to make sure we saw were the Stone and Man carvings... this was an outdoor display of carvings in the stone down near the harbor...

Walrus

Faces...

Close-up of a face with some fish around it...

... more faces...

Whale...

Fish and/or whales

We had completed our desired walk around Qaqortoq, and headed back to get our hot chocolate and get onto a tender back to the cruise ship.

This was our last port in Greenland. We have commented that we didn't know exactly what to expect from Greenland, but that we are glad now to have memories of places we've seen.