My expectation of Greenland was pretty high before my trip, yet the capital of Nuuk turned out to be the most underwhelming of all the stops on my trip. I guess I was already pre warned by my Antarctica excursion guide during my trip last year. He does excursion tours to the remote north west part of Greenland as well and he said there's nothing to see in Nuuk, it's just like another big town. The north western part of Greenland is where I really want to go. Sadly, the cost of those remote excursion tours are 6-7 times of what I paid for this trip. I'll just have to save that for another trip in the future.
A little Greenland history
Greenland is a vast island with 57k population and has the lowest population density in the world. Source Its population is even smaller than my hometown, so it was really unreasonable to expect too much of it. I made the most of it during my short stay, because Greenland is still a very unique place.
Another landmark in the capital is the Mother of the sea sculpture. The sculpture represents Inuit folklore culture and its relationship with the sea. You can see half of it here, and if one wasn't aware, you'd probably overlook it thinking it was just a bit of rock. During low tide, visitors can walk to the sculpture, so this gives you an idea of how high the tide can go.
Broadwalk Walk
It turns out the highlight of the day was the walk along the Nuuk Broadwalk. It was a very pleasant walk, but nothing too special to be honest. The sea was very calm, I imagine less so in the winter.
We passed by the National Museum, or rather the back of it and saw some equipment used to produce train oil. Train oil is oil from the blubber of whales, walruses and seals, you extract the oil by boiling the blubber. This was very popular in the 19th century and the train oil was exported to Denmark and Europe and used for many daily uses.
We continue along the wooden walkway. The sea was to our right, and many blocks of residential buildings lined up to our left. These look like public housing, and despite the spectacular sea view that would command astonishing premiums in other countries, these didn't look like the best living conditions. We left the walkway after a while and looped back behind the building blocks into town. The back of the buildings didn't fare much better than the front. There were a few car parks, bits of rubbish and a food delivery guy turned up with a takeaway. Yup, they have that in Greenland as well.
Greenland supermarket
After lunch, we still had a little time before heading back to our ship, and of course I couldn't pass on an opportunity to drop by the local supermarket. That's the best part of travel: getting an insight into local life.
One thing that caught my eye in the supermarket was a big stack of plastic bottles. These look like washing up liquid, or dish soap as the Americans call it. There were different colours, we get that as well in England, lemon, apple etc, and these cost around USD8 for a 2 liter bottle.
Being the inquisitive person I am, I had to take a closer look. I saw a bottle had cola written on it. Never seen a cola washing up liquid before, but I have heard of using a cola as a cleaning agent. Then there was something called cool blue, sprint, and others in Danish which I couldn't understand, one of them look liked some kind of berry. Quite a selection of washing up liquid I thought. Then I took a closer look and with my friend, Google's help it turns out these aren't washing up liquid. Quite the opposite, you can actually drink them because they are concentrated drinks!! You mix one part liquid with 5 part water to make a drink 🙃 Ha ha! Another faux pas after my seal skin last time
Finally, it was time to head back to the port and my flash day trip to Nuuk was over. The city itself didn't have much to offer as a location, but what it lacked was made up by mother nature the night before when we docked at the port.
A spectacular display of northern lights that lasted for a good 40 minutes watched from the warmth and comfort of my ship cabin. What a lovley welcoming gift. Good bye Nuuk and Greenland, I hope to come back one day.
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