Back in the U.S. of A.

We cruised into the New York harbor around 4:30 this morning and had to wait our turn before the Harbor Pilot could steer us into our berth in Brooklyn.  I counted 5 other cruise ships pulling into either the Manhattan or Brooklyn docks.  Plus there were a slew of cargo ships waiting to get into port.  We tied up to our berth a short time after 6AM and below is what we saw from our stateroom window.

Above is view of Manhattan Island and the entrance to Brooklyn harbor

Statue of Liberty                                                                Brooklyn Bridge

  

Manhattan Island with the new twin towers being constructed next to ground zero.

No matter how far and wide we travel it feels good to be back in the USA!

We’ve Gone to the Dogs

We spent Wednesday in the eastern-most Canadian province. Here are photo clues as to its name:

  

That’s right . . . Newfoundland Labrador! Neither of us realized that Newfoundland and Labrador were one province until yesterday. There are about a half million people living in an area about the size of Texas, and they appear to be a hardy bunch, given the remoteness of the location and the ruggedness of the terrain.

We lucked out again with beautiful, sunny weather for our day ashore. Our ship docked right in the town of St. John’s, founded in 1497 by John Cabot who named it after John the Baptist. We walked into town and took photos to show just how large the ship looked; it was over 4 city blocks long.

  

The buildings were painted every color of the rainbow, with legend being the townspeople used whatever color they had left over after painting their boats.

  

I loved the way several homes had mailboxes that reflected the colorful buildings that they were attached to.

  

In the afternoon we took a tour that included Quidi Vidi (pronounced kiddie viddie), a tiny fishing village on the outskirts of St. John’s. There, we stopped at a microbrewery that now occupies the site of a former boat house.

  

We then drove up to Cabot Tower on top of Signal Hill, where the first transatlantic wireless transmission was received in 1901. This was especially interesting for us to see because last week, in Falmouth, we had seen the origination site of that Morse code message. We climbed to the top and took in the breathtaking views of St. John’s harbor.

 

In that last photo, you can get an idea of just how narrow the passage is from the harbor into the open ocean. As we left St. John’s, most of the passengers went to the outside decks to observe our S-L-O-W departure. What do you think Bill and I said as we pulled out of Newfoundland Labrador???

“We have to come back here!”

                       

Iceberg Straight Ahead, No Port, No Starboard!

We woke up at 6AM this morning (Sunday, 9/2) and this is what we saw in the front and sides of the ship.  Holy Titanic -- where’re the life boats?!

Ah yes, before I get to the icebergs let me tell you about the adventure we had leaving Iceland.  Our ship was due to leave Reykjavik on Thursday night around 10:30PM.  We were in our stateroom getting ready for bed (as you know we are real party hounds, thus the late hour) and we watched out our window as we cast off from the dock. I looked out 10 minutes later and we were back at the dock all tied up again.  The captain came on the PA and said he tried to get off the dock using the side thrusters on the ship and two tug boats but the wind blew us back to the dock.  The wind was blowing a steady 50 miles an hour with higher gusts.  He said the wind was forecasted to blow that strong or stronger the rest of the night and he felt it was too dangerous to attempt another launching that night.  He said we would remain at the dock in Reykjavik until the wind subsided and changed directions, forecasted for the next day.  The winds abated and changed directions late Friday morning and we were able to cast off and head for Greenland, a two-day cruise away.  We were 13 hours behind schedule but with the wind at our backs and the peddle to the metal we arrived in Greenland only 3 hours late!

Now back to the icebergs.  Evidently there are always a lot of icebergs around Greenland.  Wouldn’t you think Iceland and icebergs would go together and green trees and fields with Greenland.  Well they got it bass ackwards.  One day out of the port of Qaqortoq, Greenland an ice pilot from Denmark gave us a presentation on the ice fields and ice flows around Greenland.  He had been a commercial sea captain and had been sailing from Denmark to Greenland for over 40 years.  He was on board to help the captain get our ship through the ice flow to Qaqortoq and back out!  We did learn that there are three types of ice that make up the icebergs in the North Atlantic.  The ice comes from 1. the winter ice from last winter (only about 10 feet thick) 2.  ice from the polar icecap (frozen salt water) and 3. ice from glaciers (frozen fresh water, the hardest type of ice).  Icebergs from polar ice have about 70% of the berg underwater. Glacial icebergs have 90% of their ice under water.  So in the photos above and the additional ones below you are seeing only 10% to 30% of actual size of the icebergs.

The photos do not do justice to these icebergs.  The photo on the bottom right the bergs were taller than our ship!

We tendered into Qaqortoq.  The city has a population of 3.400 and I think our ship  carries more passengers than that.  Plus there was a smallercruise ship already in port before we arrived.  Eighty-five percent of Greenland is covered in ice over two miles thick.  All the settlements are along the coasts of the island (the largest island in the world).  A total of 57 thousand people live on Greenland which is close to the size of Alaska.  Below are some photos of the town.