Hello from beautiful Aurora!

Well what can I say? What a cruise this has been so far! Where do I start?

Let’s go from the beginning………. We left Southampton and called into both Dublin and Cork in Ireland.
We had 2 grey and rainy, but fabulous days.

What’s brilliant I think, about calls into Ireland, are the tour guides that are used for the Shore Excursions. They’re hilarious. I went on a tour to the Guinness factory and had a guide who had everybody in stitches with his jokes, and I went on a tour to the Jameson whiskey factory (this is all in the name of research, by the way) and the guide had us all singing Irish songs all the way back to the quayside. Every bus that I watched pulling up to the ship had all the passengers singing Sweet Molly Malone (among others)…..  Anyway, we left Ireland happy, and started off towards Greenland……

We hit an unexpected storm and had around 12 hours of violent, force twelve winds, enormous swells, and lots of crashing and banging around the ship! Thank goodness we were on Aurora because she always handles the weather SO well. What a relief!

By morning the seas were calm and the ship was quiet, although it was still cold, grey and a little bit rainy.
Unfortunately, we had to abort our first Greenlandic port of call. Surprisingly though, not because of the weather we’d met. We arrived near to Qaqartoq at around 6am in the morning to be faced with miles of static sea ice blocking any accessibility to the harbour. The captain (David Pembridge) and his dedicated ice pilot saw no way through to the land and made the decision to just head north, straight towards our second planned destination.

This destination was Nuuk, Greenland’s capital city. With the number of inhabitants living in Greenland, the population in Nuuk constitutes it to be a city, however to us Brits, it is more of a small town. Regardless, what an amazing place (and what a fabulous experience, just to be there)! As we tendered across from Aurora, humpback whales were playing in the fjord around us, and Father Christmas was waiting on the quayside for us to step ashore. I’m notoriously a big kid at the best of times, but humpback whales AND Santa?? ….. it totally made my year!

This was the first time in years that tours have operated in Greenland and they were really successful (thanks to a huge amount of work done by the Shore Excursions executive, Natasha Harris, in Head Office in Southampton). 

Whale watching cruises left almost every 15 mins and every single boat had wonderful sightings of the huge mammals thriving in their natural environment.

A walking tour took passengers on a historical introduction of the city with a visit to the Nuuk museum and a viewing of the mummies of ancient local Inuit tribespeople.

A highlights tour by coach took passengers on a thorough exploration of the city and its outskirts. Buses drove right to the edge of Nuuk, and we saw where the tarmac road stopped to make way for nothing but hundreds of miles of Greenlandic wilderness.

The people of Greenland were so happy to welcome us and tried to do everything possible to ensure that our time in their country was thoroughly enjoyable. I think they succeeded spectacularly.

So we left Greenland and made our way towards Iceland. What a contrast! The two islands have clearly been misnamed by their Viking discoverers. Greenland is covered with an enormous ice sheet and Iceland is gloriously green!

As we missed our first Greenlandic port of call and arrived in Nuuk a day earlier than scheduled, we managed to secure a berth in Reykjavik earlier than planned too. Instead of a single day’s call in Iceland’s capital, we ended up having an afternoon, an overnight, and a full day in port. What a treat! A last minute tour programme was planned for the first afternoon and nearly 300 people took advantage of exploring as far afield as possible.

We’ve just left Reykjavik and are sailing north towards a second Icelandic destination, Akureyri. We’re due to arrive at around 12.30pm tomorrow.

So far this cruise (we’re not even half way through yet), I’ve seen humpback whales, a sperm whale, Santa Claus, enormous blasting geysers, bubbling hot sulphur springs, volcanoes, lava, a couple of massive glaciers, I’ve stood on both the Eurasian and American tectonic plates (and seen how they’re pulling the earth apart as they move in opposite directions), I’ve drunk a pint of Guinness in Ireland (I didn’t manage to get the whole pint down but ooh it does taste so much better in Ireland), I’ve learnt some Irish folk songs, I’ve seen how Irish whiskey is distilled, I’ve survived some of the worst seas I’ve experienced in a long time, and I’m absolutely over the moon to be back home on Aurora! We have a ship full of wonderful, friendly people (both passengers and crew) and we’re having a brilliant time sailing round Ireland, Greenland and Iceland en route to Norway.

I’ve taken over 1000 photos so far this cruise, but there are a couple attached below (just so that you can feel like you’re sailing on this wonderful cruise with us).

We’ll be arriving in Norway in a few days time, so I’ll give you another update then.

A 250 metre long iceberg that we passed en route to Nuuk.

 

Bubbling mud at a temperature of 200 degrees C in Reykjavik

 

Santa in Nuuk with Shore Excursions Manager, Tanya and Assistant Shore Excursions Manager, Anna

 

Hot Springs near to Reykjavik, Iceland

 

A Humpback whale in the fjord near to Aurora

Thanks so much for all of your comments. I’m really pleased to be back writing the blog again. I’ll try to respond to as many of you as possible, so in response to some of you….

George – I’m so pleased to see that you’re still following the blog. I hope school is going well for you and I look forward to meeting you in your uniform and stripes one day! Keep on working hard and you’ll make all your ambitions come true in no time at all. I’ll keep you posted as much as possible with all of the exciting places that one day you’ll hopefully be visiting for yourself on one of our lovely ships!

Lisa – I’ll certainly pass on your regards to Natalie. What a lovely experience to get married on Oriana!

Dean – I haven’t got the tour details for Aurora’s 2012 world cruise yet either I’m afraid but I still have my brochure from last year on Arcadia. The itineraries are very similar so I’ll have a good re-read for you and send over some suggestions. I look forward to meeting you all in January!

Jo