The Ocean Nova docked in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, in early morning. See the map at the top of this post for our route to date.

At 7:30 am we disembarked and loaded onto buses for a “city tour.” The commentator on my bus was an 18-year-old girl whose comments were mostly accurate, always cutely delivered but on occasion plain wrong. She claimed, for example, that Greenlanders had hunted the penguin to extinction while the penguin has never existed in the northern hemisphere.

It was quite foggy at first. I took the photo of boats above from the bus while my iPhone urged me to clean my camera lens.

Following the tour I wandered around and visited the Nunatta Katersugaasivia Allagaateqarfialu (the Greenland national museum and archives) also known as the Grønlands Nationalmuseum & Arkiv. It was interesting and, even better, WARM. There were some exhibit descriptions in English which were useful. The signage in Nuuk is bilingual – Greenlandic and Danish. It makes finding your way around a bit of a challenge. Hurrah for Google Translate!

Our city tours commentator told us that school, which is compulsory to grade 10, teaches Greenlandic as the first language, Danish as the second, and English as the third. The government pays tuition and board for students continuing their education. High schools and the country’s only university are only in Nuuk, so out-of-city students must incur great expense to continue.

Things in Nuuk are quite expensive. I went in search of postcards to mail to my grandchildren. I couldn’t find regular photo postcards with the typical tourist pictures like muskox or kittiwakes, so purchased three lovely art cards for $10CAD each. The postage was $8CAD each. The clerk at the post office told me Greenlanders love Canada, implying that they don’t love the US quite so much since I was purchasing stamps for both Canada and the US. I told him that “he” wanted to take over Canada too, so we are with Greenland!

Here are a few photos of flowers growing by the side of the road, and some miscellaneous photos of Nuuk. A fun fact: everything that grows in Greenland is edible. There’s a mushroom that will make you feel sick but it won’t kill you. Good to know! There are 10 photos in the slideshow, so keep clicking. 😊

You may have seen photos of Nuuk with its colourful houses and buildings. Historically, structures were identified by colour. Police stations were black. Hospitals were yellow. Churches and schools were red. Fish factories and industrial buildings were blue. Utilities were green. The colour coding is not required now, but Greenlanders still like to paint their structures in bright colours. That said, police stations are still black and hospitals are still yellow.

In a rather sobering moment, our commentator told us that all Greenlandic aircraft are painted red so they’re easy to spot in the snow after they crash. 🫣

We are now making our way across the Davis Strait, and will enter Ungava Bay the day after tomorrow. See you then!