Day 8: Ilulissat to Copenhagen

When we got back from the Eqi Glacier trip last night we went for a final evening walk around Ilulissat.

Then we went up to the rooftop bar of our hotel and had a rather expensive drink. But it was a drink with a great view

We had a fairly early start to our travels on Tuesday morning, with just enough time for breakfast at the hotel and a final look at the icebergs before we had to set off towards Ilulissat airport.

Our first flight was to a place called Kangerlussuaq and it was due to depart from Ilulissat at 09.45. We'd been promised a shuttle bus would pick us up from outside the hotel at 08.15 and take us to the airport, which was only a couple of miles away. The bus ended up being at least 10 minutes late and very chaotic, because all the other tourists in the hotel seemed to have packed significantly bigger suitcases than us, but we got there in the end.

When we arrived, Ilulissat airport turned out to be tiny. We've been to some fairly small airports in places like Lapland, but I think this is the smallest one we've ever seen. The runway barely looked long enough for a plane to take off and there wasn't any security to go through at all. There also weren't really any announcements or information boards - or at least not any which we could understand. But around 09.30 we saw an Air Greenland plane on the tarmac and people started heading outside to it, so we followed the crowd.

Luckily it was the right plane It took off very sharply on the short runway and we flew up over the icefjord.

We were sitting on the wrong side of the plane to have a view of Ilulissat and the big icebergs, but we got to see lots of little ones at least

They were quite surreal to fly over.

The plane had only been in the air for about 20 minutes when it started descending again.

We were making a short stop in the town of Aasiaat (which you may remember we sailed past on Sunday morning).

The plane was essentially acting as a bus service and touching down here to let some of the passengers off, then pick up even more. If we thought the runway in Ilulissat was small, the one in Aasiaat seemed even smaller

It was only a short stop and we were soon up in the air again.

On the way to Kangerlussuaq we flew over plenty of ice.

Kangerlussuaq is situated at the end of a fjord, which soon became visible out of the window.

It's only a small settlement (population of about 500) but it's home to Greenland's largest international airport.

Along with Narsarsuaq, this is one of only two airports in Greenland which has a runway big enough to handle large international planes.

Unlike Narsarsuaq, Kangerlussuaq is situated in a place with comparatively good weather (not a lot of fog etc) which means that planes seem to have a better chance of not being cancelled

After what was a very scenic flight, our little plane came in to land.

We then had about an hour to wait in Kangerlussuaq before our connecting flight to Copenhagen. It was quite a small airport and quite busy. We did have to pass through security here, although still no passport checks. We had our passports stamped when we entered Iceland last Tuesday and no one has shown any desire to see them since!

The plane to Copenhagen was significantly bigger than the plane from Ilulissat.

It didn't take long after taking off for us to get a view of the edge of the ice sheet.

Soon all we could see beneath us was ice.

It was only once we'd flown most of the way across Greenland and were approaching the island's eastern coast that we began to see mountains starting to poke up out of the ice.