Heidiland11

Heidi:

Thanks so much for the excellent and complete review. Next year (2016) the Greenland cruise fare DOES include the Iceland to Greenland charter flight and transfers in Greenland so that's one less issue. Did you have to pre-reserve all your "shore excursions" before the cruise departure OR did you reserve your spot when you were already onboard???

We had booked our 3 excursions before the cruise and I think I remember that one was booked out on the ship. We had one more booked in Ilullissat - the walking excursion but as I said we could not dock. You can do 2 excursions in Ilullissat, they will fix it.

The one in Nuuk to the fjords - some people went with the shuttle into town to the tourist office and we were told they booked the fjord tour for half but you would need another couple or so to go with you.

By the way the charter flight arrived quite late from Reykjavik in Kangerlussuaq - 5 pm - therefore they were driven straight from the plane to the ship

Heidi

Thanks for the update... A few questions:

1) How was the "charter" flight one-way to Greenland? Was it just the cruise ship passengers on the flight?

2) Any paid-for excursions you would recommend or was the Zodiac transports enough to see everything you wanted?

Thanks...

Thanks for the update... A few questions:

1) How was the "charter" flight one-way to Greenland? Was it just the cruise ship passengers on the flight?

2) Any paid-for excursions you would recommend or was the Zodiac transports enough to see everything you wanted?

Thanks...

Hi Oren

I promised to give you a review on our trip end August from Greenland to Iceland.

There were two trips this year - one mid August from Iceland - and ours end August from Greenland. We spoke to people of the first trip in Kangerlussuaq after they had disembarked and they were quite satisfied with their tour - especially the weather, they had 12 sunny days!! which is not normal in Greenland. Our weather was a mixture.

We know that the charter flight was only for Ocean Diamond passengers.

We had arranged our own flights but as far as I know you have to book the charter flight from / to Iceland next year with Iceland Cruises.

We have arrived two days before departure in Kangerlussuaq and did the excursion to the icefield on our second day. This was very good and interesting. We were allowed to walk one hour over the icefield. This excursion is sometimes included in the travel arrangement of Iceland Pro Cruises though the people we spoke to had not enough time to walk on the icefield.

One thing, do have rainwear with you, especially pants as you will get really wet in the zodiacs and we needed very warm cloths end August. However we were lucky that the mosquitoes had just disappeared.

About the ship, most of the problems have already been mentioned - heating, thermostat, rattling in the lower floors (we were on an upper floor in a renovated stateroom so we were lucky)

The small dining room on 4th floor was a good recommendation. Food was mostly good.

The lectures we had about vikings etc have always been repeated in English after the German one. We missed a good daily introducing of next days locations etc.

Uummannaq is a nice little village.

Weather and ice can always change your programme. We were able to go into Disco bay and see the Equip glacier (the tour before us not) but we could not dock inside Ilullissat and had to stay outside. Fortunately the little boats for the excursions through the icebergs came out to fetch us - at least the first group we were luckily on. This excursion was really good as we went right through the ice. We have not seen Ilullissat.

The excursion to the fjords of Nuuk is very expensive and actually not too much to see - it is more or less whale watching - the first group saw sevaral, our second group saw one coming up several times, the third group none.

There is the zodiac tour included to the Ivittuut "wholes" with underwater stalagmites which you can see from the zodiac and which is very interesting. We also saw some mosques at the shore.

What we liked very much was the excursion in a little boat to the Quoroq icefjord at Narsarssuaq. You have to do that and hopefully the weather is good. You see phantastic icebergs in blue and white, come near a glacier, and finally you get martini on the rocks right from outside.

We were also able to go through the Prins Christian sound, unfortunately rather bad weather but this was good as well.

Going over to Iceland was quite stormy - I got seasick for one day.

Our first stop in Iceland was Stykkisholmur. There is a zodiac tour included for bird watching but they told us that the birds had all gone. We therefore booked an excursion to see the peninsula which is probably very nice if it is not raining all day what we had.

One highlight we had was one night with polar light where it has to be dark and a clear night. We had a list at the excursion desk where you could sign in to be woken up by phone should they spot a polar light and the phone rang at 00.30 hrs

We thought it was a very interesting trip and we have seen lots of ice - that was the reason we went there.

Hope you have a nice cruise next year!

Heidi :)

These were very interesting and helpful reports and details on your cruise with Ocean Diamond.

We will do the cruise from Kangerlussuaq to Reykjavik end August and hope to have a great time. We are not expecting a luxurious ship and also hope that the positive things will predominate.

We will post a report on return.

Heidi

I have driven from Venice to Naples, Italy. It was great but I did avoid going into the center of cities, especially Naples. I would like to rent a car and drive from Santiago to Valparaiso but haven't found a rental that lets you drop off the car in Val. If you find one that does please post it. Also if you find out you need an international license I would like to know.

 

Judee

Hello

we have just rented a car for Dec in Santiago one way to Valparaiso with

http://www.contactchile.cl Tel (+56-2)2641719. They specialise in service for Germans but I think you can contact them as well

Heidi