Something funny about the ship wifi: if you don’t pay for a package, they still allow app notifications to leak through. I haven’t decided yet whether this is a technical oversight (unlikely), clever bait, and/or a dark pattern. It means you end up with badges on many of your apps (e.g. 30 unread emails, 8 unread Facebook notifications, etc.), which can make a certain personality type anxious 🙄. They do allow for Google Maps updates to come through for free.
Since Rowan’s birthday was yesterday, he could see he had lots of (presumably) Happy Birthday messages waiting for him on Snapchat, which a 24 hour expiration. Thus he was keen to get moving in the morning and get off the ship, since our plan was to head directly to a coffee shop up by Sermilik Lake which supposedly offered Internet service. We managed to tender, trek through the chilly rain, and arrive at the coffee shop by 9am… only to be informed by the person inside that the shop was closed to those not on a tour. Ok. On the one hand, I get why they’d want a group in there paying $120pp (or whatever) for a “tasting” instead of our $50… but it was still pretty disappointing to be told sorry, go away. Our only other interaction with a Greenlander was at the grocery store, where again we’d hope to be able to buy some things and use the Internet, but they didn’t speak English and for reasons I can’t fathom because I’m usually super on top of these things I hadn’t downloaded the Greenland language pack for Google Translate.
We walked up a hill in the spitting rain, took some photos of the ship, then tendered back. That was the sum total of our experience on land in Greenland. I was disappointed, but mostly with myself for not being better prepared with things like the Google language pack and more weather-appropriate shoes.
On the departure from Qaqortoq, the Captain and pilots took the ship near an iceberg and performed a few 360’s for plenty of photos and videos.
We did cake and singing at main dining tonight, since we were out at a specialty restaurant last night:
The Captain informed us that weather conditions would not allow for us to sail Prince Christian Sound, a sound located in southern Iceland on our way to Iceland. Further, we are expecting storm conditions tonight: winds to 50 knots, seas to 15 feet. This has been the source of a lot of … consternation … for some people in our cabin. I’ve tried to reinforce that this is a comfort concern not a safety one.
Anyway, tomorrow will turn into a sea day, with another sea day following. We are then arriving earlier than expected into Akureyri to allow for more time to enjoy that town.
No sunset photo tonight, so you’ll have to make due with an elevator one instead.
