2025 15N Trans-Atlantic Cruise Day 8: Qaqortoq, Greenland

Saturday, September 6, 2025

Today’s Weather

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 is 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”) Royal was giving out come-first tender tickets starting at 830A. If you were debarking after 1P you could simply show up and wait for a tender. I arrived at 845A and got 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.

A town on a hill by waterAI-generated content may be incorrect.

A person's feet on a wooden platformAI-generated content may be incorrect.
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 me in line, so I 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, tried to follow a Geocaching Adventure for the first time, but the one for Qaqortoq appeared to be misconfigured so instead had to complete the Earthcache Stone & Man. We did attempt to follow the 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.

A person wearing sunglasses and standing in front of a rock with fish carved in it

AI-generated content may be incorrect.

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.