July 11-13th, 2024

We are finishing up our 3rd sea day on our way to Nuuk, Greenland. It has been pretty smooth sailing but lots of fog so the boat is blowing their horn a lot. The first sea day we saw quite a few icebergs off our balcony and the temperature dipped down quite a bit.

Our first view of ice bergs.

I have managed to find a group for Mah Jongg but unlike the Viking cruise the Mah Jongg sets on Princess are not as well maintained. The first 2 mornings we had to check the sets 2 and 3 times and then take from other sets to get all the tiles needed. We noticed people on the first morning leaving with the sets and when we asked they told us if we had a complete set we needed to take it and put it in our room to make sure we had a good set. While it did not seem right we all agreed and I have brought it back to the room. The good news with that is that I guess I will always be a part of the game since I have the set. The group I am playing with consists of 3 women from Arizona who all live in retirement communities but don’t know each other. They are all on this cruise to escape the heat. We agreed to meet at 9:30 and play until noon in one of the dining rooms.

The temperature on our first sea day. If we want to chill the room down we just open the balcony door for a bit.

They had a big celebration the first sea day to celebrate this cruise ships 21st birthday. The atrium was packed and we could not even get down to the 5th floor to see the cakes they made for the celebration. They did not cut one of them so I managed to get this picture the next day.

The Island Princess birthday cake.

The Island Princess and its sister ship, the Coral Princess, were both built specifically to fit through the smaller locks of the Panama Canal. This boat has been through the canal 236 times in it’s career so far.

On the second sea day they attempted to do a Guinness world record and hold the world largest pizza party at sea. Not sure who thought of this idea but not the best for the boats in the arctic.

This was on the screen by the open pool and they kept changing the time that they wanted everyone to go upstairs. At first it was 4:30, then 5, then 5:30 and finally 6pm. Supposedly all the ships in the Princess fleet, no matter where they were, were going to participate at the same time. You had to go upstairs, get counted into groups of 50 and then stay in your area, on the open pool deck, until you were called to get your pizza. You could not eat the pizza until 6pm so that everyone was celebrating at the same time. We are unsure where all the boats are but they did talk about one of the boats in Japan and it being 1 am and the boats in Alaska being 10am. Unfortunately no one planned for it to be freezing and most people could not hang out on the open deck just waiting. I went up to deck 15, which looks down on 14 and grabbed some pictures but did not participate.

You can see everyone huddled together trying to stay out of the wind and bundled up in the blankets they use for Movies Under the Stars.

This was one of the groups lined up to get their pizza which they tried to keep warm until they got the go ahead that they could eat it. We saw a lot of people leaving complaining that it should not have been done outside and it was just too cold and no place to sit. The cruise director announced later that about 400 people participated which is pretty bad for a boat that has 2200 guests on board and 800 crew. I guess at some point during the cruise they will let us know if the idea worked or not.

On the last sea day before Nuuk we are now officially in Arctic waters and it has had a little more movement on the boat because we don’t have far to go so we are just killing time and hanging out in open water waiting for morning to dock. We have not seen any ice bergs since the first day but should see more as we get closer to land tomorrow.

The temperature this am when I left to go play Mah Jongg.

Being this far up north we do not have a sunset until 12:30am and the sunrise is at 5:01. We cannot imagine winter up here when there is little to no sunlight. It has been interesting going to sleep for the night while the sun is still up.

We dock at 8am in Nuuk. It has been several years since we were here last so curious to see the changes. One big change is the dock and that we don’t have to tender. Town is 1.2 miles from where we dock and Princess is offering a shuttle but unlike Viking you have to pay 22 dollars for the shuttle. We have no plans tomorrow so we will get off and walk into town and do a little sight seeing.

Kathy made this door decoration. Makes it easy to find our room. One lady thanked Kathy today for it and said she always knows which way to go when getting off the elevator because of it.