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The ferry left Sisimiut at 21.00 last night and we had another night of sleeping in our cabin. The sea continued to be much calmer than I'd expected, with the result that I didn't get woken up by any big waves during the night. The first thing I knew was when my alarm went off at 07.00, I looked out of the window and I saw.... an iceberg! This was quickly followed by another iceberg which was absolutely enormous - probably bigger than the ferry! Wow, that was quite a start to the morning! The ferry was just about to pull in to the town of Aasiaat. The town itself didn't look anything special but there were some amazing icebergs in the sea around it. We were able to spend the morning in our cabin, watching them from our window. There were some small icebergs... ...and some really, really big ones. We were supposed to check out of our cabin at 12, so we packed up our things and went out on deck to look at the views there as the ferry got closer to Ilulissat. We realised other people had spotted a huge iceberg on the opposite side of the boat. Wow! This one was pretty impressive too There were so many different shapes and sizes. We went back inside to find out what was being served for lunch in the cafe. It turned out to be a choice of meat dishes with rice. Tim had pork in a paprika sauce and I had what seemed to be chunks of beef in gravy. We've been really lucky not to be served fish on this trip! We could still watch the ice through the cafe window as we ate. The closer we got to Ilulissat, the more and more icebergs we saw. Tim went out on deck again to get some photos of them. It was quite surreal to see so much ice floating in the sea, but really beautiful. The ferry arrived punctually in Ilulissat at 13.00 and we joined the queue to disembark. There was a shuttle bus waiting which drove us from the port to the hotel where we're staying. It wasn't very far so we could have walked it if we needed to, but there would have been a fair amount of uphill so the shuttle was nice We checked into our room, which at first looked pretty average. Then we realised we had a view. A view of the icebergs We settled in to the room for a while before going out for a walk. The town of Ilulissat has a population of less than 5 000 people and almost as many sled dogs. We passed a few of them as we walked up towards some nature trails on the edge of town. There were even some little puppies. After about a kilometre of walking, we made it to the Ilulissat Icefjord area, which is a World Heritage Site. There's a visitor centre here, as well as a handful of marked trails. We started following what I thought was going to be an easy one; the "Yellow Trail", which was marked with splodges of yellow paint on rocks and advertised as being 2.7km. We started off and I was amazed to find that there was still snow on the ground in places. The whole area was beautiful but the trail soon degenerated into an exercise in clambering over rocks and/or trying not to slip on mud and slushy snow. At one point I was considering giving up and turning back. Tim went ahead a bit to check whether the path got any easier, before coming back to say that it was definitely worth continuing. I made it over the rocks and wow, look at that view! And look at that view The ice was absolutely stunning. And there was so much of it! It had definitely been worth continuing for this While we were admiring the view we noticed that while we'd been climbing up on this difficult path, other people seemed to be walking on a much easier path lower down. We decided to go down and investigate that instead. We made our way back to the visitor centre, a rather odd construction whose roof you can walk on. From there we started following the trail. It was mostly much easier than the one we'd been on, although there was a bit of snow to negotiate in places. We were walking towards the most incredible views. And we were really lucky that it still seemed to be cold enough for the area not to be swarming with mosquitos. I'd seen reviews online from people who had had real problems with them later in the summer. The further we walked, the better the views of the ice. After half an hour or so we'd nearly got to the point at which the marked trail ran out. Before we did we turned one last corner... Wow. The views were even better from here, including of this iceberg so big it looks like it's an actual island. I didn't fancy climbing over all the rocks to get right to the edge But luckily Tim did and he took a video It was a really magical place and it was hard to turn our backs on it and start walking back up to the hotel. Eventually we did though, climbing back up past the visitor centre and down past the sled dogs again. Today has been such an exciting day And it's not over yet, because we're going on another boat trip this evening. But that may have to wait until tomorrow's blog!

We were woken up this morning at 06.30 by a very loud ferry announcement, informing us that in half an hour's time the ferry would be arriving in Maniitsoq. Sure enough, when we looked out the window we found that there was some land just coming into view. The picture is blurry because I took it through our cabin window! Breakfast on the ferry is served at 07.00, so we got dressed and went to investigate it. It turned out to be rather chaotic, with half the boat having turned up at the same time and pushing and shoving to get into the queue. But the food itself was fine; for the breakfast included in our ticket, we were allowed to take one roll, one slice of normal bread, one slice of rye bread (which we both passed on!) as well as help ourselves to some cheese and various cold meats (which we also passed on - they didn't look very appetising). Most importantly, there was also coffee! The sea around Maniitsoq seemed really calm and so walking around with trays of food wasn't a problem. It stayed calm as we left Maniitsoq behind and began to sail towards the ferry's next destination of Kangaamiut, which was good because it gave us an opportunity to try out the shower in our cabin in fairly stable conditions We also went up onto the outside deck for a while to admire the views. We sailed past some very impressive mountains. Look at all the snow on them! At times it felt a bit like we were somehow sailing past the Alps Around 11am we noticed that we could see some rocks outside our cabin window. We realised the ferry had reached its next destination, Kangaamiut. Kangaamiut is only a small place; Wikipedia reckons it has a population of just 293 people! The harbour isn't big enough for the ferry to get right up to the town, so anyone wanting to join or leave the boat here has to be transferred in a smaller boat. After Kangaamiut the ferry didn't have any stops for several hours. We went to the onboard cafe at midday to investigate lunch and were pleasantly surprised to find that we were able to eat some of it. I was worried that everything was going to involve fish, but today's lunch was rice with some sort of meatballs in what tasted like a chicken korma sauce. The overall effect was distinctly odd, but at least it wasn't fishy. At some point in the mid-afternoon, the captain made an announcement over the tannoy to say that we were about to cross the Arctic Circle. How exciting! I went up on deck again to see whether there was anything to see but we were quite far out to sea at this point and I could only just make out the coast of Greenland in the distance. Dinner on the ferry was surprisingly edible too; I ended up with beef as a main course and lemon mousse as a pudding. We ate it swiftly because we knew the ferry was going to arrive in Sisimiut at 19.00 and this was due to be a two-hour stop, so long enough for us to get off the boat and do some exploring. Sure enough, by around 18.30 Sisimiut came into view on the horizon. Sisimiut is the second largest city in Greenland, despite the fact that it has a population of less than 6 000 people There were tonnes of people getting off the boat here, so we had to queue up and wait our turn as the locals unloaded vast quantities of luggage. Like Nuuk, Sisimiut seemed quite hilly and so once we did get off the boat we had to start walking uphill almost immediately. As we walked we got some good views of Sisimiut's church. The church itself was perched on top of a hill, then there were rows of houses perched on rocky outcrops above that. You wouldn't want to have vertigo if you lived up there!! We walked a bit further through the town and found the local football pitch, complete with artificial grass and snowy mountains behind. There were loads more mountains further into the distance, as we found when we walked to a coastal viewpoint. We also caught sight of a small lake on the edge of town. As we walked towards it, I was surprised(/concerned!) to see a group of huskies sitting on the grass. It turned out they were chained up, so nothing to worry about. The lake was really stunning. We realised there was still ice at the far end of it. That was really surprising as while it didn't exactly feel warm, it definitely felt above freezing. Once we'd finished admiring the view we had to turn around and retrace our steps past the huskies... ...and past the church, back to the ferry. We made it back with plenty of time to spare, before the ferry pulled out of Sisimiut at 21.00. We now have another night on the ferry, before arriving in our final destination of Ilulissat tomorrow afternoon.