Greenland
Greenland and Iceland
(Same Story posted in both countries!)
July 2025
Being retired has advantages. Well, not the aches and pains of old age. But the freedom to be flexible. Schedule-wise, not bending-wise! I monitor vacationstogo.com for cruises and specifically check their “90 Day Ticker” button. (They have the best search engine for cruises, but I don’t buy from them – see my article “Travel Cheaper.”) This is where they list all last minute deals on trips occurring within the next 90 days. Some are still expensive, some are bargains, some are on cruise lines I don’t use, or to places I have been or don’t care to go. But then sometimes there is a bargain on a location and a cruise line I want. I hit on two of these in 2025 and both were bargains. One was a cruise from Fort Lauderdale to London that matched up nicely with the timing of a cruise from Trieste, Italy. So instead of flying across the Atlantic, we flew to Fort Lauderdale, sailed for 14 days to London, and then flew to Florence, Italy. We drove all over the northeast coast of Italy, and spent Easter in the micro-country of San Marino. Then we caught our scheduled cruise of the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas. But that’s all another story. No, there were no headlines, “American tourist terrorizes Italian drivers with rented Supra.” Because the car was actually a Cupra, a Spanish-built car by Volkswagen. This story begins with me finding a cruise in June going from Newark, New Jersey to Iceland with stops in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Greenland, and multiple stops in Iceland concluding in Reykjavik. It left in three weeks. But, just like me, it was cheap! So that is how we ended up in the Upper New York Bay on the Celebrity Silhouette, a ship that is just a shadow of it’s former self, sailing by the Statue of Liberty. First stop was Halifax, Nova Scotia.
We didn’t do much in Halifax other than walk the boardwalk that extends for a couple of miles from the cruise port and around downtown. We were just here back in October during a side trip while driving thru the fall colors of New England. I had also visited Halifax twice on extended business trips previously. My knee was hurting, but I limped the full length of the boardwalk using a cane. I wasn’t up to climbing up to the Citadel, a fort that overlooked and protected Halifax from invading Americans using canes. I had visited it before, and Dana doesn’t care much for exploring forts.
Next stop was St. Johns, Newfoundland. Not to be confused with St. John, New Brunswick, just a province over. Because the ancients kept reusing city names over and over. Isn’t that right, Paris, Texas; Paris, Tennessee; Paris, Kentucky; Paris, Illinois…. Per Google, there are 22 towns in the USA alone named Paris and about 40 world wide. Bit of trivia for you: Washington is the most common town name in the USA, with about 88 occurrences. That means some states have more than one town named Washington. But that pales in comparison to the most common town name in the world with San Jose racking up 1,700 locations!! I recall the 60’s song “Do you know the way to San Jose…” which should have had the next line “…which freaking one?!” There are only 21 places in the entire world named St. Johns, so maybe it hasn’t been overused. I just found it frustrating because in previous business trips to St. Johns, air and hotel reservation sites were always throwing up both options. I had to be careful I didn’t fly into the wrong one or show up at the right one only to learn my hotel was reserved at the other one. Thank goodness I never worked for a company with operations in San Jose! Any one of them!
I absolutely love St Johns. Newfoundland. I have never been to St. John New Brunswick. A moderately sized city of 200,000 in a province with only 500,000, it gives off small town vibes. There is a national park that surrounds the east side that I would always hike in the evenings when I worked here during business trips that lasted 1-3 weeks. In just a few minutes, I could step out of my hotel and leave the city sights and sounds completely behind. Most paths converged at the highest local peak, Signal Hill. Signal Hill is named because it was the fist place a radio signal was sent across the Atlantic. The entire message consisted of “’Sup?” It pays to be brief when typing in Morse code. Actually, that is a complete over-exaggeration. The first message was sent in 1901 from Cornwall, England to Signal Hill and consisted only of the letter “S”, which is three dots (…) in Morse code. This was an enormous feat at the time because there are only nine towns in the entire world named Cornwall.
My Bride had never been to St. Johns nor walked Signal Hill, so I insisted we head out. Remember, just a day earlier I was using a cane, but I was supercharged to walk Signal Hill again for the first time in 19 years. I did decide to Uber to the top of Signal Hill and then walk back down thru The Narrows. Although down is not just down since there are numerous ridges and ravines to cross. I made the entire trek without a cane, although there were a lot of moments with groans and moans. And my Bride said if I pulled anything like this on her again, she’d make sure I was the one groaning and moaning next time! I didn’t use the cane anymore on this trip. My knee felt much better and I was concerned my Bride might yank it away from me and whack me with it!
The next stop was Qaqortoq, Greenland. There is only one town in the entire world named Qaqortoq, which is Greenlandic for white. This is a town that really needs to buy a “u”. This part of Greenland appears to be an iceberg graveyard. The current pushes passing icebergs into coves and harbors where they ground. Qaqortoq is also known as Julianehåb when a Danish explorer renamed it after the Danish queen Juliane Marie. With a population of 3,069 it is the fourth largest city in Greenland. Considering the Celebrity Silhouette holds 2,800 passengers and 1,500 crew, we kinda overtook the town on our arrival. I asked AI the pronunciation of Qaqortoq and this is the exact response copied: “Greenlandic pronunciation: [qɑqɔttɔq].” Thanks AI! That helps a lot! Now, go solve pi with no remainders. We walked the entire town in less than an hour. One thing I noticed that is vastly different from home – solar panels were mounted vertically on the south side of a house. Not on the roof or facing upward. That’s how far north we were!
You may have heard the irony of Greenland being covered in ice and Iceland being green. The Vikings named it Greenland because if they named it Snow-Covered Glaciers, they couldn’t entice anyone to colonize it. Just like if we named Washington DC more accurately, like say…the Stinky Political Armpit of America, no one would want to move there either. Our route out of Greenland was supposed to be thru Prins Christian Sund. Greenlandic pronunciation: $*&^@(%. Which sounds a lot like cursing if you’re familiar with cartoon bubbles. This is a narrow passage thru the islands of southern Greenland. However, high winds were forecast and we took the open North Atlantic instead. Oh $*&^@(%! I had hoped to see some seals or puffins, so I was disappointed with this development.
We had three stops in Iceland at Akureyri, Isafjordur, and our final disembarkation at Reykjavik. In Akureyri, we negotiated a tour at the terminal to see Goðafoss Falls, the "Waterfall of the Gods." The waterfalls were impressive. Not as big as Niagara, Victoria, or Iguazu Falls, but still very much worth seeing. We also got to see a lot of the countryside with grass covered rolling hills. We had the option of a drop-off in town at the botanical gardens so we could see the sights of Akureyri while we strolled downhill back to the ship. The town is scenic and the weather was fantastic the day we were there.
The next stop was Isafjordur. While Akureyri is Iceland’s second largest city behind Reykjavik with 20,000 inhabitants, Isafjordur is a village 2,600. Heck, Qaqortoq would probably win if they ever went to war with each other. The town was easy to walk and there was trail up one of the mountains that surrounded the town that provided a panoramic view of the town and fjord. The steep mountain had huge mounds topped with reinforced fences at the base that served as a protection against avalanches wiping out most of the town in the winter months.
We concluded our cruise in Reykjavik. The tone was set for Reykjavik with trying to get a ride to the hotel. Uber and Lyft aren’t in Iceland because Iceland has it own version of Hopp. (I think other countries use Hopp, but I haven’t used it previously.) I downloaded the app in advance, set a method of payment and reviewed the procedures to request a ride. We exited the ship and went to the ride pickup location and requested a ride. We had a driver pick us and the app said 10 minutes. Not a problem. In five minutes I looked at the progress and it said 15 minutes. Still OK, might be traffic. Then the driver dropped us and another picked us. Again 10 minutes, then after a few minutes it was 12. Then 15. Then it dropped us. This went on for 45 minutes. Finally I cancelled the request with a driver 20 minutes out and went to the old fashioned taxi queue which had been depleted while I tried to get a Hopp ride. Hopp tried charging me for dropping the request! Fortunately Chase Sapphire credited the charge back. I’ve used Uber and Lyft dozens of times in multiple countries without any problems whatsoever.
Reykjavik was cloudy to point of appearing it was dusk in the middle of the day. I didn’t think anything of it until someone mentioned the volcano. Come to find out, a volcano south of town was spewing smoke and ash and that made up the dark cloud cover overhead. I then became concerned about our flight out the next day since volcano ash can do bad things (technical jargon!) when sucked into the intake of a jet engine. All flights were leaving on schedule, but there were some routing changes around the ash cloud. We took a hop-on-hop-off bus to learn about Reykjavik and see the sights. One sight that was strange was a sign of a farm tractor with a circle and slash and the statement under the sign “A virkum dogum.” According to Google translate, this means “on weekdays.” So if I have this straight, I can drive my farm tractor into town on the weekends, but I am prohibited from doing so on any weekday. Make note of this in case you find yourself in Reykjavik with a farm tractor and you need to move about.
That wasn’t the only weird thing about Reykjavik. It has the world’s only penis museum, The Icelandic Phallological Museum. Maybe a toss-up between weird and just disgusting. Thank goodness it is the only one in the world, but I think the world could survive on none! It was pointed out on several maps and on the hop-on-hop-off bus audio. The ship had destination seminars that would educate you on upcoming stops and this was even mentioned during the Reykjavik presentation. We had absolutely no interest in seeing it, but we did inadvertently walk by it while we were in downtown. While it has human…parts on display, the signage outside indicated most displays are of animals native to Iceland and the far north. I still don’t get it. And don’t want to!
We left Iceland for home, but our luggage decided to extend their stay and then elected to visit Denver. If you travel and don’t have AirTags or their non-Apple equivalent, I can’t recommend these enough. United managed to find my bag and deliver it to me 3-4 days later, but kept denying my Bride’s luggage existed. I could see it on my phone via the AirTag tracker that it was sitting in Terminal C at IAH. After six days of arguing with incompetent persons who claimed there was nothing in their system and our luggage had probably been stripped of all ID tags, I drove to IAH, and made a scene that my luggage was about 50 feed from me in a protected area. I finally found someone who would listen, probably the only luggage person in IAH that cared, and she found the luggage in about a minute. I am redundant on tagging luggage because I have lost luggage numerous times, never permanently, and both name tags were on it as were the airline checked luggage tag and the 3 matching UPC stickers. Along with the bright colored tassels my Bride made years ago for quick identification. By non-idiots. It was completely impossible to misidentify this luggage, but United Airlines baggage handlers managed to do it repeatedly for almost a week!
All things considered, I thoroughly enjoyed this trip except for Reykjavik. I would really like to spend more time in Greenland and St. Johns. Nearly all our ports were remote and had to import everything, causing prices to be high. But Reykjavik prices seemed outlandishly high compared to Greenland and the other Icelandic towns. The other stops were fantastic to visit and explore. But Reykjavik just wasn’t as friendly and that disgusting museum, the prices, and the Hopp drivers didn’t win any favorites with me. But next time, I need to go anytime other than over July 10. Although she got her gifts in advance, Goondaughter Sia has not forgiven me for missing her 6th birthday party!
Note: I am the Goondad. When Leo was adopted from Korea in 2013 at 2 years old, “Granddad” came out “Goondad”! And because my three daughters thought that was outrageously more appropriate for me, I became the Goondad. So, therefore, they are the Goonson and Goondaughter, or Goonies collectively.