My second time here today. Sad to be leaving Ilulissat but I couldn’t have had better luck with the weather, making for a fantastic stay. Here’s the Air Greenland check in counter, which has two desks. Just off to the left behind the person working is the Icelandair check in counter (beside Gate 1) – they have a couple flights a day to Reykjavik. The family that was on the flightseeing trip with me was on the earlier flight of the day, and they went directly from our trip to check in.
I spotted this beside the check in counter… want…no room though 😦
Only a few flights left today. Still so odd to see a departure so far ahead of schedule. I had almost booked another full day trip to get myself back to the airport around 15:15 to catch the flight at 16:50. Wonder how many other people were in that boat <wah, wahhhh…..>.
There are 2 gates.
Sadly, they announced over the intercom that our flight would be boarding from Gate 2 (which is in the bag claim room), and the older lady with the walker made her way over, only to be announced after a minute that it was actually Gate 1.
There’s the Icelandair Dash 8, and some contrails from one of the many Transatlantic flights that pass over Greenland every day.
Here’s our Dash 8 – Tulugaq.
And the Air Zafari P68 heading out again.
There’s the Ilulissat airport, with the new runway just on the left. They had to knock down part of a mountain to level enough ground for an extended runway.
The town.
The proximity to the immense Icefjord. I heard someone asking on the Yellow trail the first day – can you see the glacier from the trail? Not likely!! The Icefjord Center is in the lower center of the photo.
Here is the stunning ice and fjord scenery that I’d missed on the way up. Amazing views the entire way. And I managed to get a good seat on this flight.
At the end of the silty fjord, a bit to the left of the propeller tip, is Kangerlussuaq, which hosted a military base built in 1941, subsequently converted to the primary international airport for Greenland in 1992. It transitioned this role to the new Nuuk airport in November 2024.
The scenery close in to Nuuk was simply beautiful.
Crystal clear and no wind, in contrast to my visit 3 days ago. The evening that I’d arrived in Nuuk from Copenhagen the wind picked up so much that the twice weekly flight from Newark had to divert to Reykjavik as they were unable to find a weather window to land.
I get to see the actual arrivals area in the Nuuk airport, since I need to collect my suitcase.
Yes, a bit early! I can say I’m unlikely to experience something like this again in the near future.
I took the once hourly Airport Express bus into town, since I had no Danish kroner for the public transit bus (cash only) and also didn’t want to pay through the nose for a taxi again today.
There were plenty of taxis for those who needed them, though.
There weren’t that many people on the bus so I got a seat right behind the driver with a nice view. On stilts on the right is the end of the ILS equipment for the runway. The main part of Nuuk is off to the far right, so we’d later pass directly underneath it.
I arrived at my home for the night – Hotel SØMA – which means Seamen’s Home in Danish. It was in the harbor and had shipping containers, what I think was a fish depot, and a military barracks around it. There wasn’t anything else there but it was a short walk into town for food and more interesting sights, and it was unique.
It took a while to get checked in as there was a small but very annoying group of tourists from Slovenia who were pestering the front desk agent to call various places about some tours and whether they could squeeze one more person on to something they’d already booked, last minute. Not sure where they were going but I’m thankful to say that I didn’t see them again.
They lobby had a TV screen with Windy.com on it. The blue means calm winds. Very, very good weather for the next day.
There was a nice view of the harbor from a balcony on the upper level, attached to this lounge area with some comfortable seating.
Nuuk was a very modern, very European feeling small city. There were plenty of 6-10 floor apartment buildings, many of them new.
Some abandoned apartments on the main street – maybe public housing. Look at the colorfully boarded up windows. Anywhere else, they’d be covered in graffiti.
Lots of construction here.
A look back down the main street to the east, where I’d come from.
And looking to the north, around the bend at this point.
One of the apartment buildings had this colorful mural.
This local pub had a number of patrons enjoying a few pints in the July Greenlandic sunshine. It was about 15 degrees out.
There was a pedestrian zone just like you’d see in Europe, with shops and restaurants on either side.
The adorable Bank of Greenland HQ with their brand ambassadors, the Little Auk I believe.
There’s even an elevated pedway between buildings, like our +15 bridges in Calgary!
More people enjoying the sun outside the Nuuk Cultural Center.
A day at the beach in Greenland… wow! I actually did see a guy go in and swim – he had to wade out far enough until it was deep enough to dive in. He only lasted about 60 seconds. The yellow building in back is the Hans Egede House, the oldest house in the country (1728) and the residence of Hans Egede, a Norwegian missionary to Greenland in the early 1700s. A statue of him is the point on the hill behind the house.
My low cost late afternoon snack by the sea.
I’m not sure what kind of fish these are, but they were plentiful right beside the shore.
Historical buildings in Nuuk’s old colonial harbor (the new harbor is on the other side of the peninsula by my hotel).
An old boat rail system was used in the absence of a dock, but is clearly not in use.
A memorial to Arnarulunnguaq, the only female Arctic explorer.
A look back at the peaceful harbor.
The houses, grass, and flowers were so colorful and brilliant today.
Looking down from the top of the hill hosting the Hans Egede statue.
Towards the east.
The Lutheran Church from 1849.
The picture postcard view of Nuuk with the mountain Sermitsiaq beyond.
Looking east from the postcard view spot, beside a communications tower.
Again caught off guard by the high in the sky evening sun, I visited Kunguak Cafe behind the Greenland National Museum, who had a temporary patio set up in the parking lot, thoroughly enjoying a delicious smashburger, before heading back to the room for the night.
The next day, I would continue home via a unique, once a week flight from Nuuk to Iqaluit, Nunavut in Canada. This is the only international commercial flight into Iqaluit and the avgeek in me very much wanted to make it work. But the flight itself is not 100% reliable, again due to the weather, and I very seriously tossed around the idea of abandoning the rest of my Air Greenland ticket, and changing my Aeroplan booking to get back home via the new United Airlines flight to Newark, which had plenty of availability and would have got me home at the same time. But it would have left 6 hours earlier, giving me no more time in Nuuk, and although an interesting route wouldn’t have been quite as unique. In the end, I stuck with my original plan. I decided to risk a 1h45 minute connection in Iqaluit on separate tickets, with online check in unavailable, and a checked bag to pick up and drop off again.
It was a bit grey in Nuuk for my last morning in Greenland but the trip had been so successful so far that it didn’t bother me.
I felt like I’d had my fill of sightseeing in town, so I went out souvenir shopping. And by the way, here’s one of the very modern public transport buses, this one on the route that goes to the airport.
I went to Anori Art and picked up several things to take home.
I had time for halibut and chips in the aptly themed restaurant at the hotel (very good!).
Curiously, I had a private van to the airport even though I’d booked the bus. Turns out that there was a cruise ship in town and the buses were busy with cruise ship passengers, and there were no other people booked on this run. That was nice.
Here is a look at the check in area back at the Nuuk airport.
Self check in kiosks (which I didn’t use).
And the security control area – complete with modern entry gates and CT scanners (so you don’t have to take out your liquids and laptops!)
There is a cafe in the airport beside the duty free shop. I had a cappuccino there while I waited (also so I could use their seating).
I kept seeing this Faxe Kondi everywhere so I grabbed one for the flight. It’s similar to Sprite but not the same.
Greenlandic border procedures are very interesting. It’s not in the Schengen area, but there is no passport control when going to/from Schengen countries. Today, we’re clearly exiting the Schengen area and anything to do with Europe, so we have to go through exit controls before boarding our flight.
I’ll have to say, this is one of the coolest stamps in my passport.
Here is the waiting area for Gate 6 – which must be used for the Newark flights which are on a 737 MAX.
There were only a few seats in Gate 5; essentially once you went through passport control there was a small area to line up and then head directly outside. Curiously, another passenger on this flight had quite a problem with exit control. It sounded like he’d arrived on a ship and had no entry stamp to Greenland or to anywhere in Europe. They did let him go without any repercussions.
Here’s Qooqa, another Dash 8 that will take us across the Davis Strait of the Arctic Ocean to Iqaluit. Still being nervous about the self-connection in Iqaluit, I’d been tracking the aircraft assigned to my flight on the Air Greenland app today, and was comforted to see it touch down at about quarter after 2, right on schedule.
On the seat map, row 1 showed only one seat, 1D; the other ones weren’t blocked, they simply weren’t there. The check in agent commented on this as well. So I had the entire row to myself. I was pretty thankful for this arrangement given that the guy behind me was quite large, and required the seatbelt extender. Would have been uncomfortable for both of us had we been rowmates. The flight was less than half full though, so people only sat beside each other if they wanted to.
Takuss, Greenland! It’s been so great!
Surprisingly, a meal was offered on this flight: a reindeer sausage sandwich from a takeout joint that I recognized from the main street in Nuuk.
Before we’d departed and after the door was closed, the captain came out to the passenger cabin and spoke to everyone (16 passengers), informing them of the details of the flight and expected conditions in Iqaluit. Also, he announced that after the food and drink service, that anyone who wanted to was welcome to come and visit them in the flight deck. Awesome!! 5 people took advantage of this, including a girl about Ellie’s age; and I was the last one to visit. I was able to spend about 20 minutes up there until the top of the descent; sadly it was cloudy so couldn’t see anything below, but it was still very very cool and something I’m not likely to experience again. The captain said if this was a domestic Greenland flight I would have been welcome to land in the jumpseat! What a cool experience!
Close to Iqaluit, we finally broke through the clouds and were treated to views of the Baffin Island tundra.
The intertidal flats didn’t look that nice compared to the crystal clear waters of Greenland.
We’ve arrived at Iqaluit on their only international flight! One of the ground staff yelled at me to put my phone away when I tried to take a photo of our plane, which was parked right beside the Canadian North 737 that I’d be on later. The International Arrivals area was a corridor that went around the perimeter of the building to a very small CBSA area with 2 counters. One of the staff was permanent in Iqaluit and a supplementary staff member was sent up from Ottawa just to receive this particular flight. I didn’t think of it, not having done a paper entry form in years, but they didn’t hand them out on the flight so everyone was furiously scribbling them in at the arrivals hall with pens and forms handed out by the CBSA agents.
The bag belt said Kuujuaq but it was actually ours from Nuuk. The bag belt for domestic flights was on the other side of a wall. We had to wait until most of the passengers were through border formalities (maybe about 5 minutes after the bags came out), as one of them had to come out to the exit to receive the paperwork before releasing us.
Hooray, I’ve made my self connection! With only 1h45 minutes between the flights on separate tickets, I was really worried about missing the onward flight on Canadian North, which would have been very costly to me. I had a backup, fully refundable flight booked the following day, and would have also had to book a last minute Airbnb for the night in Iqaluit had I missed this flight – which would have made the delay about $1500 out of pocket. Thankfully, I checked in without issue well ahead of closing time for the flight. I was able to continue on with my Aeroplan ticket of which the first bound was Calgary to Copenhagen; and now Iqaluit to Calgary.
I walked around outside the airport a bit but it wasn’t very nice. A sad surprise coming from beautiful and friendly Nuuk. I had previously booked a weekend in Iqaluit over the May long weekend, via good value Aeroplan points, but cancelled it due to weather. After my short experience here, I think I don’t need to go back anytime soon.
There was no publicly accessible Wi-Fi in the air terminal and only 3G cell service, so it was brutal trying to do anything – including cancelling my flight bookings for the next day. There was a cafe of sorts but it wasn’t open. The pilots and cabin attendant from the Air Greenland flight took their brief stop in Iqaluit to enter the country and buy some souvenirs at the only open store, a convenience stand.
Here are my two planes from today, side by side (from inside, to avoid being yelled at again).
The first leg of the flight was from Iqaluit to Kuujuaq in Northern Quebec, and was almost empty, I think there were less people on here than on the Dash 8 from Nuuk.
It cleared up over the Hudson Strait and we got some nice views of Akpatok Island in Ungava Bay.
And then very interesting, just-north-of-the-treeline scenery as we flew along the wide Koksoak River to Kuujuaq.
This seemed to be a busy hub for Air Inuit, and a flight from some other northern community had just landed when we pulled in.
We were told to deplane as although it was supposed to be a 40 minute stop to pick up more passengers, there would be a delay of indeterminate length arriving into Montreal. Curiously, there was a stretcher set up in the last few rows of the plane, which I spotted as we deplaned through the rear door.
Here is the Kuujuaq airport. Not a very nice place to stay, we ended up being there for over 2 hours, but at least they had free, working Wi-Fi, unlike Iqaluit. I was able to cancel my backup flights for the following day.
It was interesting however to see what was being used for a pushback tractor – a Chevy pickup, spotted here pushing back this Twin Otter.
Finally we board again. I expected to get yelled at for taking the pic, and I did.
More Canadian Shield scenery flying south to Montreal.
There was an ok, if not substantial meal on this 2 hour flight, including wine. The highlight was the freshly warmed enormous chocolate chunk cookie which is inside the foil wrapper.
The clouds looked pretty nice before sunset!
The remainder of the flight was uneventful. I had a 35 minute connection in Montreal, which of course I missed, and being the last flight of the evening to Calgary I had to spend the night there. At least it wasn’t my fault for missing my self-connect ticket, and either the airline or my travel insurance will pick up the cost of the room. I went to the Air Canada service counter on arrival and they rebooked me in minutes on the first flight the following morning and retained my upgrade.
What an amazing trip! It was completely worth it for even four days in Greenland. I’ll definitely be back again to explore more of the country and even more areas around Nuuk.
Ellie's Adventures 