2025 London and TA Day 14: Cruise Day 8 - Qaqartoq, Greenland

Cruise Compass
Dinner Menu: A Taste of the Caribbean
Today’s Weather
Location at Start of Day
View From the Port Webcam
Location at End of Day

One thing I had learned while researching Greenland was that Greenland, despite being a Danish protectorate, is not part of the EU. What that translates to is that international cell phone plans that work in the EU do NOT work in Greenland. Costs to use your cell phone are about $3.15/min to make a call, $1.90/min to receive a call, $0.50/text, over $6.00/MEGAbyte for data. So, the moral of this was to put our phones into airplane mode and confirm that data was off when not connected to the ship’s wireless!

The (reasonable) activity at this port appeared to be simply to walk around. As this is something we can do ourselves I didn’t bother trying to find any kind of organized excursion. Instead, I found a nicely photo-documented walking route that would take us up to a scenic overlook of the port. Whether or not we would have the energy to complete the route was TBD.

As per the Cruise Director, this port is apparently pronounced “Cocker-Talk”).  Starting at 830A, Royal was handing out first-come first-get tickets for those who wanted to get onto a tender before 1P, so I showed up at 845A and got use tickets for tender #16.  We reported to MDR Deck 5 at 1045A when our number was called and were actually boarded and onshore by 1130A.

Shot through the legs of passengers as they exit the tender, which has just docked at the pier

The cityscape as seen from our balcony.  This is a 30x digital zoom so it is a bit grainy.

Before that, however, while standing in line to get my water bottle filled at Caffe Latte around 1030A, it turned out that CD Kat was just in front of us in line - E noticed the young lady in front of us was dancing to the background music and, recognizing it was Kat, said something like "you just can't stop yourself from dancing, can you?" - so we chatted with her a bit and got clarification on the scope of responsibility of an Activities Director vs Cruise Director. She also confirmed that they’d had about 60 minutes of Northern Lights “activity” last night but, again, I don’t think it was visible to the naked eye.

Once ashore, we tried to follow a Geocaching Adventure for the first time, but the one for Qaqortoq appeared to be misconfigured so instead decided to complete the Earthcache Stone & Man. We did attempt to follow our self-guided walk up the hill, but only made it halfway before deciding to turn around. We stopped by the town’s small/only grocery to look around. It was perhaps 2x the size of Diekman’s.

The town has several stone carvings on a ridge fronting the road by the pier.

This particular photo was taken so I could submit it to geocaching.com in fulfillment of an Earthcache

Spinning around 180 degrees from the prior photo, we took this just prior to heading down to those popups where we'll catch the next tender back to the ship

The tender boarding area

Another view of the town, taken (IIRC) on our way back down the hill from our earlier walk.  We're going to turn right at the T intersection and work our way that direction, stopping off at the local grocery to look around. 

We saw a cruise schedule on the door of the gift shop at the pier listing all the ships that were in that season. Brilliance, listed as having about 2200 pax, was by far the largest ship visiting this 3000-person town. The 5-6 taxis we saw were driving quite aggressively, suggesting that while they love the business they may not love all the people!

Tonight’s Headliner was John Paul Ekins (again) but this time paired with a violinist from the Royal College of Music (London), Lucilla Rose Mariotti. Their combined show was the best of the three.