To the amusement of some, I always visit a fire station, wherever I am, to see how they do what we all do. Those visits have included places as diverse as Kathmandu, Nepal, London, England, Kandy, Sri Lanka, and Istanbul, Turkey. And yesterday I added Ilulissat, Greenland, to the list. Fire protection, as essential as […]

From Sisimiut to Ilulissat Ilulissat was the next stop, where the icebergs are, or at least a lot of them, and we elected to travel by ship, up the Davis Strait on an “overnight” voyage to get there. Is it really overnight if it never gets dark? The Arctic Umiaq Line is a single-ship operation […]

Assaqutaq We have been traveling on the southwest of the island, in and around Sisimiut, on the Davis Straight and east of Baffin Bay. Greenland is a place of coming and going, for at least the last 4,500 years, as successive waves of people have arrived from many parts of the globe. Settlers include Siberians, […]

Greenland’s Second City The population of the entire island, the biggest in the world, is just 55,000 and the majority of that is on the west/southwest side. Nuuk, the capital, has a population of 17,000 and Sisimiut, where we flew the other day, has about 5,500. The name means “place of the fox burrows” and […]

The Arctic Desert I’ll start by observing how blessed I am to have seen a fair chunk of the world and yesterday may hold the record for the greatest single day contrast thus far. It began at 0600 in Copenhagen in a hotel and thanks to the wonders of jet travel, ten hours later I […]

Don’t Even Look The exchange rate is about 6.4 Danish Krone to the dollar but unfortunately, nothing can be purchased for a dollar, or two or three, etc., etc. I have given to not looking at prices. A danish and a coffee is 60 Krone, a 10-minute cab ride is 100 Krone and it’s upwards […]

But Copenhagen First (and Last) So, it’s off to chilly Greenland for ten days but who knew that the way there was through Denmark? The Danes own Greenland (sort of) so we come here and then fly back across on Tuesday. I had paid for an economy-plus ticket on Scandinavian Airlines but my so-called frugal […]

Each year millions of Americans ride motorcoaches as an inexpensive alternative to air or rail travel. Dozens of discount lines now run between major cities across the country. Tens of thousands of groups book travel where motorcoaches are used, including student field trips. Motorcoaches are safe but not entirely so. This past week a motorcoach […]

Part of the adventure of travel is experimenting with getting around to see how other folks do it. This trip has had a fair amount of that. When heading for the airport in Chiang Mai, the hotel staff urged that I take a tuk-tuk three-wheeler rather than a taxi as it would be quicker. Indeed, […]

Bangkok Bangkok has its version of the same old story of occupation by various European powers, the French, British, etc. Today, it is a gigantic city and growing larger by the day. There are construction cranes by the dozens and they can be seen in all directions for miles on end. In land area the […]