A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Archive for September, 2008
- Woman on Bench, Qaqortoq, Greenland
After two days at sea, we arrived at St. John’s in Canada on Monday. St. John’s claims to be the oldest town in North America, but I wonder if that’s really true, and it may depend on how you define the word “town.” We took a morning tour around the area and took a lot of photographs.
St. John’s is the home to many fishermen, and we went down to the docks to see a lot of fishing boats in various stages of repair and disrepair. We did see a couple of boats arrive back with their catch and we watched the guys cutting up the fish right on their boats.
Our ship was scheduled to leave at 5 PM, but at that time there was a very thick fog and the captain said it was too dangerous to leave because the inlet to the harbor is very narrow. The fog didn’t lift until about midnight, and the ship left soon after.
Right now we are on the way to New York; we are scheduled to arrive on Thursday. The sea has been pretty rough since we left St. Jon’
- Qaqortoq, Greenland
I’ve seen some “crowd psychology” at work on this cruise ship, and I find it to be both fascinating and repugnant.
It seems that when you get a group of about four or more men doing something together, such as watching a performance in the theater or playing a trivia game, they begin to do and say things they wouldn’t dream of saying or doing if they weren’t in a group. Normal inhibitions go out the window and being boorish and/or crude becomes the norm. I suppose alcohol consumption is also a factor in this behavior.
The facts that (1) I don’t drink at all and (2) I don’t like the crowd-type behavior are enough to keep me out of situations like this.
We have played some trivia games, though, and in fact we won the Beatles trivia contest, scoring a perfect 21 out of 21. The moderator asked if anyone in the crowd had ever seen the Beatles perform, and I was one of three who had been to a Beatles concert (I saw them in Indianapolis in September, 1964).
We are now heading almost due south from Greenland to St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada and are scheduled to arrive there on Monday morning. I see that Hurricane Kyle is heading north up the Atlantic coast to greet us! However, right now it looks like the hurricane is going to make landfall in Maine, and so I think it will pass to the west of us.
- Daycare in Qaqortoq, Greenland
The ship arrived in Qaqortoq, Greenland about 8 AM this morning. I never dreampt that I would get to visit Greenland, but here I am!
Qaqortoq only has about 3000 residents, and given that there are 2700 passengers on this ship, I think we overwhelmed this sleeply little town. We have been told that whenever a cruise ship visits this port it’s a huge deal to the town. School is cancelled so that the children can see the tourists and help guide them around (I think this is because the children speak English better than the adults now that it is taught in schools).
We spent about the four hours walking around the town, and I concentrated on taking photographs of the residents. Interestingly, the people are descended from both the Danish settlers (from hundreds of years ago) and the native people, called Inuits.
The few stores in the town were crawling with other ship passengers,so I tried to avoid going in them.
We were told that the high temperature today was forecast to be 38 degrees, but it didn’t really seem that cold.
I was fortunate enough to get several photographs of the people of Qaqortoq. I’ll be posting them here over the next few days. Be sure to click the photo in order to get the full-size image.
- Iceberg off Greenland
We went right through the weather front and it was pretty hairy. The ship was moving around quite a bit. Some passengers became very ill, but fortunately, my patch was working because the bumps didn’t bother me at all, other than making it hard to walk from point A to point B.
However, there was a real bummer aspect to the weather: we didn’t get to go to Iceland. The captain decided that it was too dangerous, given the severity level of the storm. Most of the passengers were disappointed because Iceland was going to be one of the highlights of the trip. I decided that I wasn’t going to let it bother me, though, because I don’t want to waste any of my precious vacation moments on being upset or angry.
Given that we were bypassing Iceland, the ship changed course and headed towards Greenland. We are going to a town on the southern end of Greenland called Qaqortoq. Yes, that really is the correct spelling (3 Q’s), and no, I don’t know how to pronounce it.
Towards Thursday afternoon and evening we started seeing icebergs! Yes, an iceberg sunk the Titanic, but the captain assures us that we have a specialist navigator on board who is an expert on navigating around icebergs.
- Northern Ireland Town
I’m still one day behind.
On Sunday night our ship made the short journey from Dublin to Belfast. We were still asleep when the ship docked in Belfast Harbor early on Monday morning.
Rather than taking an organized tour (wherein 60-70 people ride around on a big bus and listen to the tour guide talking) we decided to look for a friendly taxi driver who could drive us around. We lucked out and found a personable and knowledgeable driver who took us to several great locations in Northern Ireland. We saw the Giant’s Causeway (some unique-looking rock formations that are right on the north coast), the “rope bridge” which (if you are brave enough) you walk on from the mainland over to a small island, and lastly to Belfast Castle, which back in the day was used for real castle-type stuff, but now is mainly used for weddings!
I was much more impressed by Northern Ireland than I was by Ireland. All around Northern Ireland things are well-maintained and look good. For example, most homeowners seem to take pride in the property and keep their houses and yards looking very nice. As we drove along country roads we saw many beautiful old houses. We also saw about a million sheep!
When we got back on board the ship in the late afternoon, the captain made an announcement that a storm was coming across the North Atlantic from west to east, and that since we are going west, we are going to run smack into some “heavy weather.” At that point I went back to my cabin and put on a motion-sickness patch!
- Door, Downtown Dublin
I’m still a bit behind due to the two days that I wasn’t able to get online…
After Dover, the next stop was Dublin, Ireland. I was looking forward to this stop because I had not been to Ireland before. We arrived early on Sunday morning and the town seemed rather dead. However, within a few hours the whole city was bustling. Apparently a lot of the activity was centered about a big game of Irish football (whatever that is…it’s some kind of cross between soccer, rugby, and hurling). Most people in town were dressed in either red and white or green and yellow - depending on which team they were rooting for.
We took a tour around the city, with the main stops being St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Trinity College.
My overall impression of the city was not too favorable. It seemed…well…dirty. The town is bisected by the River Liffey, which looked really awful…like sludge almost.
We left Dublin in the evening and headed for Belfast, Northern Ireland….
- The White Cliffs of Dover
It’s been a couple of days since I posted here because the Internet connection on the ship has been either (1) down or (2) veerrrrry sloooow. But today it’s up and running at a pretty good speed.
The day before yesterday we docked at Dover, England early in the morning. Some of the passengers on the ship were going to go to London, but we decided not to go along because it’s a two-hour drive. Instead, we went to see Canterbury Cathedral, only about a half-hour drive from Dover.
The Cathedral is pretty amazing. Construction began in 1174 A.D. and it has been designated as a “World Heritage Site.” You can spend hours walking around inside. There are a lot of nooks and crannies to explore.
Back on the ship, we got a good view of the “white cliffs of Dover” which had heard of but never thought much about. The cliffs, which face the English Channel (and with France about 19 miles away) are made of calcium carbonate and really are white.
- A Soldier of the Danish Queen’s Guard
There’s a fascinating age demographic of the passengers on this ship. Age-wise, it is
quite noticeably skewed towards the “senior” end of the scale. It’s actually kind of
nice to feel like I’m younger than most of the people on board!
Of the 3100 passengers on the ship, there are only three teenagers! Which must suck for
them, not having other teens to hang around with.
I guess kids and younger adults are less likely to take longer trips (especially
during the school year).
The ship arrives early tomorrow morning in Dover, England. We’re going to take a tour to the Canterbury Cathedral in the morning.
- Military Housing, Copenhagen
Only two other couples came to the “meet-up” in Copenhagen. I expected a lot more people than that, but it was raining steadily and that may have kept some people away. The six of us had dinner together at a restaurant inside Tivoli Gardens.
Today was our last day in Copenhagen. We walked all all the pedestrian mall areas, which apparently used to be streets but now are closed off to auto traffic. There a lot of nice shops all along, and many people are out strolling around.
We boarded the ship around 1:00 PM, but the ship didn’t leave port until 8:00 PM. Right now it’s about 11:00 PM and we are heading north from Copenhagen towards the North Sea and on to England.
- Woman Waiting at Copenhagen Station
Today we decided to be adventurous. I’d wanted to see the Viking Ship Museum, which is in Roskilde, about 20 miles west of Copenhagen. Rather than renting a car or taking a taxi, our usual modus operandi, we wandered over to the Copenhagen train station and figured out how to get on a train to Roskilde. The train ride took about 30 minutes.
Once in Roskilde, we had to determine how to get to the Viking Ship Museum. I couldn’t make sense of the bus schedules, so we looked at a map and decided to walk. We basically walked across the town, which, fortunately, is not very big.
The Viking Ship Museum is great. They have the remains of five actual Viking ships which were excavated from the bottom of the nearby fjord back in the late 1950s. The ships themselves date from about 1050 A.D. Wow!
Tonight we are going to a “meet up” of some other people who will be on the cruise with us. And we get on board the ship tomorrow.
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