June 28 – AT SEA, Cruising the Denmark Strait

Weather – 2º, cold and blustery on the pool
deck…not my idea of cool by the pool!

Steps – 5,776 – not bad for a sea day

The captain has told us at least 2 times that there is a lot of ice around Greenland which may affect our cruising tomorrow and getting to port altogether. My theory is that he is setting us up to not be surprised when the plans are altered.

coffee menu

The “noon update from the bridge” came directly onto the speaker in our room, rather than the speakers in the cooridors and over the TV. This signaled that the news would be important. We learned what we suspected…we won’t be going to Paamiut or Qaqortoq in Greenland due to ice. We also won’t be cruising the Prince Christian Sound around Greenland. We are disappointed, but hardly surprised. These 2 ports were supposed to be tendered, not sure if that factored into the blowoff decision, or if we couldn’t get near these places at all. Now, we are spending the night in Nuuk which we weren’t initially supposed to do.
Disappointing but what can ya do? They’ve added tours for

coffee menu #2

the extra day, but none really appeal to us, so maybe we’ll explore the town on our own after we see it on the first day. Who knows. That’s cruising. In fact, in researching prior to the cruise we learned aht Greenland is often missed for one reason or other – makes me think what it must be like to live there. They’re giving us 10% future cruise credit, so making lemonade out of lemons…we’ll book another cruise.

pool menu

The rest of the day was spent napping, reading, eating, drinking, listening to a lecture about snow flakes, blogging, shopping. We are NOT shoppers. We have a significant amount of shipboard credit to spend because of these ports being blown off. We had booked excursions here that we paid extra for from our initial shopboard credits. OMG, we are going to have a hard time spending this. There is very little
we are interested in. I did buy one tube of foot cream; I don’t mind the stuff they have on board and I happened to have just run out at home.

more pool menu

Things got very foggy as the evening went on. By the time we went to bed the ship's horn was blowing every 3 minutes. Again...I'm glad we're far back in the ship, so the horn isn't too loud.

One thing I forgot to mention when we were in Akureyri was that to use the facilities we had to pay. I’m not sure if this is everywhere in Iceland, but at the lava fields and the falls we had to pay. These are like national parks, so maybe it’s just there. When we had lunch and bought beer, one visit was included with that. At the falls we bought a Christmas ornament and got no complimentary trip for that
. You go to a gate by the washrooms, tap your credit card and the gates open…$2 to pee!! I understand paying…I’ve paid plenty of times to go, but $2…wow!