Next up on our tour of Greenland – the town of Ilulissat, 550km north of Nuuk, and 200km inside the Arctic Circle. Yes, that means that in July the sun never sets, which we tested – positively – for ourselves.

There are no roads between Nuuk and Ilulissat (!), so it was back onto one of those small red planes to get up to the town. This is only a good thing as the views out the windows are spectacular – that is, if you manage to get a window seat: air tickets don’t come with an assigned seat as usual, so you have to be up front in the line. But that can be tricky, since they announce the gate number only in Danish, then English Greenlandic (again an example of Greenlandic laidbackness – but this time I wasn’t too happy about it).

We flew with a quick connection in Kangerlussuaq. And that’s where I got lucky: I was allowed to sit in the cockpit all the way to Ilulissat – sat in the third seat behind the other two :).

Read on: the rare cockpit views…

Get ready for lots of photos. Vast quantities of photos. For Greenland has vast quantities of natural, albeit harsh beauty: glaciers, the mountains they blanket and the icebergs that break off them.

I’ll get to glaciers and icebergs a little later, but for now, we’re off to study just ice. Not quite ‘icebergs’ but kinda mini-icebergs, micro-icebergs and nano-icebergs, which we’d already gotten a peek of in the port of Nuuk.

Read on: Fjords, iceberg climbing and… banya!

Oh my Greenland! An huuge island. It can nearly compete with whole continents on size! It’s just 3.5 times smaller than Australia. However, if the glaciers of Greenland continue to melt at their current rate, the island is going to rise up considerably once the weight of all that glacial ice is lessened. And since it’s rising faster than the level of the sea is rising, soon enough Greenland could join up with North America. They’ll have to install a land-based border with Canada before we know it!

Incidentally, the local guides here told us how dozens of years ago the height of Greenland would rise half a centimeter per year; however, last year, it rose 4.5 centimeters. Oh my Greenland, indeed!

But I’m here to tell you about something else today…

So. Here we are in the capital of Greenland – one of the smallest capital ‘cities’ in the world. Incidentally, you know what Greenland’s flag looks like? Here it is:

Read on: streets, houses, landscapes…

Kangerlussuaq. Probably the strangest international airport in the world. First off, try pronouncing it properly. Hardly slips off the tongue now does it? I had trouble with it too.

Next there’s its geographic and demographic strangeness…

Have you ever seen an international hub airport with a local population of just 500 folks? Not 500,000 – 500! Well, now I have :).

And have you ever seen an airport where for domestic flights there are no security checks whatsoever?! In you stroll, you check in, hand over your luggage, and then you can go walkabout – wherever, including back outside the airport! When your plane’s due you walk to it from wherever you are with no security hassle. A dream!

Ok. Here’s the answer to question No. 2:

Greenland is a very rocky country, and a very glacial one. So building an airport – where you need a good stretch of flat land for the runway itself plus no rockiness in the near vicinity to get in the way of airplanes’ coming in to land and taking off – is no easy task. They did find one spot however that was deemed suitable – Kangerlussuaq: a freak bit of flat bedrock sufficiently far away from the nearest cliffs. The only problem: the runway is a mere 2.8km long!

Read on: Nuuk and Ilulissat

By some quirk of fate I often fly across the North Atlantic. Europe-America-Europe; sometimes Asia-America-Europe; sometimes other, more exotic combinations. Example: sometimes I get to fly over Greenland. Sometimes this is at night – so nothing to report there. Other times it’s by day, but the weather’s typically polar and the visibility’s poor. But just sometimes, very occasionally, I get lucky: jetting over Greenland when it’s sunny and panoramic…

One such time for example was in July 2012: Crazy trip, crazy plane, crazy nice weather.

Fast forward to July 2016, and it’s crazy nice weather again up over the big green white land. But this time I wasn’t just flying over, I was to land and then stay a few days. Hurray!

Read on: inside, deeper, more and more …

Back on Tenerife. Terrific! And since we’d scheduled in a full day to acclimatize before the business part of the trip, it was high time to get behind the wheel and off around those hairpins and up them volcanoes. Naturally!

Now, normally to get to the top of a volcano your need to trek, climb and clamber up it, sometimes for several days (Kilimanjaro, for example). There are a few exceptions, one being Mount Etna, which can be scaled via first a ski-lift then specially equipped buses. Another is Mount Teide on Tenerife. This one’s for reeeaaal lazy tourists.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BHRVkrVh5nD/

Read on: A gentle touch from altitude sickness…

The other day I experienced my first ever flight on a Sukhoi Superjet 100! Here’s my brief report thereon…

Well, it was… ok. A bog-standard airliner. Small, sprightly. Takes off quickly and gains altitude real quickly i.e., steeply.

Read on: Why snooker and fishing?…

I’ve got some great news! The archaeological digs in Akrotiri have been resumed – thanks to, ah, um… us! (Not that I want to blow the KL trumpet or anything but, well, what am I going to write? The money grew on trees?) And not just the digs, also the reconstruction of the frescoes and reinforcing of the settlement’s walls! Yes, we’ve become the main sponsor of the excavations at Akrotiri! Hurray! That’s why I was on Santorini last week.

So how did the KL-Akrotiri connection come about? Why Greece? Why Santorini? Why Akrotiri? I’ll be telling you all about that in this post. It’s quite a long tale – but not as long as the time it’s been in the making: 13 years!

Read on: It all started in 2003…

The island of Santorini is famous not only for its sensational panoramic views, its stunning sunsets and its multicolored beaches (white, red and black). It’s also – to some primarily – famous for its ancient history. To the south of the island parts of an ancient settlement were dug up that were well preserved under volcanic ash. Three-story homes, drains and sewers (!), and a unique cultural aspect. Oh my Greek gods!

The settlement went the way of Pompeii around 1500 years… not ago, but BC!! Meaning all these walls, streets, windows, pots and pans are more than 3500 years old!

Read on: The excavations have stopped but it gets better…

Χαίρετε folks!… From sensationally sunny Santorini, Greece. A spellbinding place…

Santorini is magnificently mind-blowing in all sorts of different ways simultaneously: touristically, climatically, volcanically, archeologically… But wait… I’ve been here before and aptly raptured before too. So I won’t repeat all that here – especially since nothing has really changed since last time – in 2013. The beauty’s all still here (if looking from up above), the sun’s still as bright, the sea’s not receded, and the volcanoes haven’t wiped out their surroundings…

I’ve said it many times before – as have many others – and I’ll say it many times more… pictures are worth a thousand words, so without more of a do…

https://www.instagram.com/p/BGxJ2dSOicX/

Read on: So, what am I doing here? Working! …