We were awakened at 7:00 AM by the cruise director's announcement welcoming us to Nanortalik, Greenland. We had planned to get up at 7:15 and I was already awake anyway. They keep giving us back the time we lost as we cruised toward Europe, so I have been waking up really early. Following our plan to beat the rush for tenders, we had a room service breakfast and were ready to go by about 8:15. We picked up our tender tickets and were allowed to go right to the tender boat. We were in Nanortalik by about 8:30. Unfortunately we didn’t have the best weather – it was only about 45 degrees and it was raining. Not a downpour, but enough that we wished we had brought our umbrellas. We had believed the captain when he said it was going to be partly cloudy.

I had researched the port before we left home and brought the information with me . Nanortalik is Greenland’s southernmost town and has a population of 1447. The name means "place of polar bears" because polar bears have been seen here on occasion on the field ice that comes down from the Arctic. The town was prepared for our ship’s visit and had a Kaffee-mik (coffee party) with a choir performance and folk dancing planned, beginning at 9:00 AM in the Cultural Center. I had a map, so we headed directly for the Cultural Center, hoping to get out of the rain. Unfortunately, they were not quite ready when we got there at about 8:40. They had just gotten into the building themselves (they told us someone forgot to get the key for the building) and the coffee and cake were just being delivered. Just before 9 AM they let us in. It was $15 per person, which I thought was a bargain for coffee & cake and the choir and dance performance. We were among the first of the cruise passengers to get in. The coffee was strong and black; the cake was more like a bread with a few raisins in it and sugar and sliced almonds on top (it would have been better with a little butter) . When most of the people had gotten seated, they started the show. The choir sang a cappella and in their local language. They were really pretty talented. Singing without accompaniment is difficult. The last couple songs were sung by the men only. It seemed kind of funny that they were singing these old traditional songs and one of the men was reading the lyrics off his I-phone. After the approximately 30 minute concert, a group of young people performed several traditional folk dances. The dances are said to have been derived from the dances that the Dutch and Scottish sailors taught the local people. It was warm in the building and these kids were really working up a sweat. The show was really great – we enjoyed it very much.

It was still raining when we left the Cultural Center, but we stopped to see the fishermen and their catch. They had some big ugly spotted fish someone said were ocean catfish. We walked through the supermarket to see what they had for sale and to see how much they cost . We were surprised that the prices for most things were only slightly higher than they were at home (the exception was Oreo cookies – they cost 3 times as much as at home). I wanted to look at the souvenir shop at the tourist information center. Karl waited outside while I bought a T-shirt and a book for great-grandson Matthew. We decided not to go to the open air folk museum because of the rain. Considering everything (rain and all), we had a good morning in Nanortalik.

We went to dinner in the dining room for the first time in several days, then to the show in the showroom and the movie. The show was kind of a strange combination. It opened with about a 15 minute performance by contortionist Nina Burri. She could do some amazing things with her body. This was followed by a comedy/mind reading show by Rich Purpura. He did some of the same mind reading tricks that another performer (“Kennedy”) did earlier in the cruise. I don’t know how they do them, but I doubt they are actually reading minds. The movie “Smilla’s Sense of Snow” was a murder mystery with a little science fiction thrown in. Some of the characters were Greenlandic – I’m sure that’s why it was shown. The movie was kind of strange and sometimes a little hard to follow, but the mystery ended up solved in the end and the good guys won.