August 25 - Somewhere in the Labrador Sea

I’ve been missing for a couple of days – having too much fun actually.  On the 23rd we anchored off Qaqortoq, Greenland. (Try saying that name!)  This place looked like a bustling metropolis in comparison to Nanortalik the day before.  The population is 3000!  I’ve been sleeping late; I haven’t made it to breakfast for several days.  When I finally got up, dressed and ventured out, the first two people I encountered had just come back from tendering ashore and they told me they had been attacked by midges.  When I went up to Seabourn Square to get some coffee everyone was talking about the bugs and the lack of much of anything to see.  I made an executive decision to stay on the ship.  I spent the day catching up on emails, listening to a couple of lectures on the aurora borealis and astronomy.  (We have two astrophysicists onboard and they’ve been giving interesting talks.) Dinner was with my friends from Hawaii, Paige and Greg, and the Trio.  It was a lovely day with nothing significant occurring.

Here are a couple of photos of Qaqortoq I took from the ship.  It did look very colorful.  I should also mention that everything in Greenland (Iceland too for that matter) is vcry expensive. One friend wanted to buy a T-shirt and it was $75.  A couple I know ate at the only pub they saw and had a musk ox burger (just one), split an order of fries, and split a beer and the tab came to $80. 

We spent the 24th at sea on our way to St. John’s, Newfoundland.  We’re in the Labrador Sea and most of the day we experienced some pretty good seas because we were about 100 hundred miles west of what was left of Erin’s eye.  Last night I was up very late playing a very raucous game of Name That Tune in the Observation Bar.  I was roped into being on a team called the Barflies. Despite the name we were among the most sober and sedate people playing.  It didn’t help us though because the pianist playing the snippets of songs is Canadian and she played mostly songs by that country’s artists.  Unfortunately none of us were Canadian so we didn’t do so well.  One of our team members said every tune was by Celine Dion because she’s the only Canadian artist he knew.  That’s absolutely more information than you need or care to read about that so I’ll move on.

I didn’t make it to breakfast again and barely got up in time for Trivia.  I think I wrote that it’s a cumulative game and we had been doing so-so.  Well, today we redeemed ourselves! Today we made up for lost ground and then some. Hopefully, we’ll continue with this streak.  I need to collect some more Seabourn swag to give away. I had a long lunch with friends in the restaurant which is only open for lunch on sea days and then it was time for another talk by the astronomer. 

It's the 25th now (Monday – it’s very hard to keep track of the day of the week on a ship).  Last night we had to move our clocks back a half hour.  That’s strange, isn’t it?  Newfoundland is a half hour off for some reason.  It makes for interesting appointments because not everyone remembers to change their timepieces.  I was up late last night again at the show and then dancing in the Club and talking with friends.  Once again I missed breakfast but made it to trivia.  We did well again today.  There are two more sea days before this segment of the cruise ends so we’re keeping our fingers crossed.

Today the sun is out but it’s quite windy and chilly so everyone is staying inside.  We have the usual lectures (they call them conversations now) and some games going on.  I figured I should catch up even if I’ve nothing particularly interesting to write about.  Tonight I’m dining with one of the astrophysicists.  She’s from Riga, Latvia and her talks have been very interesting.

Tomorrow we’ll be in St. John’s Newfoundland and the weather forecast is calling for a 90+% chance of rain and high winds.  The only tours that were offered involved walks around the town and I didn’t book one.  Several of my friends that had booked them canceled because who wants to walk around in the wind and rain.  There was one tour involving  drinking at a local pub.  In the description it said that if you were still vertical you would walk back to the ship.  If you were horizontal you would be discreetly delivered back.  While that sounded like it could be fun, I didn’t think it was really my thing.

Well, that’s today’s update.  I think I’ll head off to Name that Tune now.  TTFN.