It only takes a few minutes to get underway. Almost as soon as I pull back, I'm engulfed in clouds and snow. Soon, though, I poke through the thick, white blanket, into a clear, starry sky. I'm cleared to follow my GPS out over the North Atlantic Ocean. After about a half hour or so, the sky begins to lighten. My brother is already in the back grabbing a nap. The hand-held GPS we brought with us has already jumped ahead a time zone, so now it's past 7am here in the plane, and the sun is just about to rise. We are now out over the ocean, although the only thing you can see below us is a sheet of clouds. Just about 600NM to our east is Greenland. Only a little more than 3 hours to go. I managed to grab a shot of the sunrise.

My brother finally decides to wake up, and so I decide to take a nap. Autopilot is working great. We are cruising at 10,000 feet and there is very little turbulence. There are still about 2 hours to go before we reach land, so there won't be anything to see except for clouds and ocean. I tell him not to touch anything, just let the plane fly itself, but if he sees the altimeter fall below 9,500 feet, he'd better wake me up, quick. So now I climb into the back seat to take a nap.

Just as it seems like I've gotten to sleep, my brother wakes me up to let me know there is land ahead. Well, almost ahead, anyway. It's the coast of southern Greenland letting us know that we are almost there. At least the clouds are mostly behind us.

Narsarsauq Airport (BGBW) is the main hub of southern Greenland. There are flights on Greenland Air to the rest of the island, as well as commercial service to Iceland and Demark.

The airport was built by US Air Force during World War II as a stopping-off point for planes flying from and to Europe, and has been operated as an international civil airport since 1959.

Some of the former airport buildings now serve as a modern hotel with all facilities, and there is also a youth hostel not far from the airport, together with many fine spots for pitching a tent.

During the summer, South Greenland fully lives up to its Danish name, Green Land, as this is the most fertile part of the country. In fact most of the flora of Greenland grow in this particular region. The winter climate is relatively mild, and summer temperatures reaching 16-18°C are not uncommon.

While I am not being paid to promote Greenland tourism, some of the text and images used in this section were taken from www.greenland-guide.dk

There are no roads or railroads in Greenland. If you want to go to the next town, you either take a boat or you fly. The Gulf Stream gets up here, and keeps the coast from freezing over quite a bit.

Up the coast a bit, there is more activity. Every year a Snow Sculpture Festival is held in Nuuk, with the participation of both novice and experienced snow sculptors from Greenland and abroad. The powder snow at Maniitsoq is ready and waiting for the skiers who are carried up to the top of the mountains by helicopter. The Arctic Circle Race - the world's longest cross-country skiing race at over 160 kilometres/100 miles - takes place at Sisimiut each year, with competitors spending the night in tents. In Kangerlussuaq you can spend the night in a hotel made of ice, where the drinks are served in glasses made from ice as well!

I'll have to make another trip up here after I get back from the rest of the world.

After a good lunch, it's time to leave Narsarsauq to fly east to Iceland.

We were cleared out of Narsarsauq at 11am local time. The climb out is every bit as tricky as the landing coming in. Heading out runway 25, it's an immediate left turn to 225 to stay over the water and climb as fast as possible. If we were going to continue west, it's not a big deal to take out time climbing and fly down the fjord. But we need to go east, so at the fork in the fjord, we turn left, heading back inland. We're heading back to 10,000 feet. That will give us enough height to clear the icepack, but still be close enough to take a picture if there's anything interesting.

Topping off the climb, we take a look around. Nothing but ice, rocks and clouds below us. This is going to be a very long leg, as it seems we have a bit of a headwind slowing us down. We're also going to cross a bunch of time zones, and flying this far north and going east, we're going to rapidly lose sunlight. It should be about 5 hours of actual flying time to Iceland, but their local time will be around 7pm when we get there. There's not much to look at once we clear Greenland and head out over the Strait of Denmark. There are a lot of clouds below us, but we still catch an occasional glimpse of ocean. The ATC is disturbingly quiet. We get handed off once between different sectors of Gander Center, and about halfway there, we get handed over to Shannon Center. Air pressure is really low today, about 29.38in. We break out the travel guide and try to figure out what we can do in Reykjavik tonight, and more importantly, where to stay.

Every time we look out the back window, it seems the Sun is sinking faster. It will be dark soon, and we are just over halfway there. Off to our right, the half-moon is staring to come up over the horizon.

It doesn't help that neither my brother nor I speak a syllable of Icelandic. From what I've been told, though, a lot of people there do speak English. There looks to be quite a bit to do, though, and we are getting there early in the evening, with any luck.

On our way in, Reykjavik Tower wants us to fly inland to set up for a visual approach on Runway 2. I was hoping for the ILS on either runway 20 or 14. Reykjavik (BIRK) is the smaller, general aviation airport in Iceland. The commercial flights use Keflavik (BIKF), about 45 minutes west of here. Just as we turn inland for the downwind leg, the tower calls us back and re-directs us for an ILS approach on runway 20. I'm glad they did, because as we descend, there's nothing but clouds and rain, and no sign of the airport until we are almost right on top of it.

I manage to get us in without too much incident. Stopping on the wet runway took a little bit longer than I had planned, and we almost wound up in a ditch. Everything was fine, though, so we taxied over to parking, tied down for the night, and set off in search of Icelandic food and nightlife.

The first thing we happened upon was an advertisement for a concert. An intriguing mix of musical genres, where The Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, alternative rock band Silt and the rappers of Quarashi come together for one night only is scheduled in Háskólabíó tonight. The concert has been much awaited – or ever since news of the possible merge leaked a couple of months ago, according to a young woman at the airport. The only problem is that that the concert starts in 10 minutes, I have no clue where Háskólabíó is, and I need food. Finding a hotel was easy, though. Hótel Loftleiðir is right next door to the airport. It has a restaurant, Internet connections, and most important, television. We get the 'superior' room, which looks a lot more comfortable for two people than the standard room. After quick showers, it's time to go forage for food.

Since we are in Iceland, we figure we might as well try some Icelandic cuisine. Of course, if that doesn't work out, there's always McDonalds. The first restaurant we find has an English-speaking waitress. I turns out you can get pretty much anything you want to eat here, as long as you want fish. Any kind of fish, cooked any way. I'm not a big fan of fish, though, so I nibbled on some other stuff while my brother stuffed himself.

While it's a well known fact in America that you can't get a decent pizza anywhere west of Chicago (and some would argue more than 40 miles away from New York City), I pass by a place called Pizza 67. It's got a late 60's hippie kind of feel to it, probably where the 67 comes from. I decide against pizza for now, and go with the "Buffalo Soldier", according to the menu - Beef steak, cheese, French fries béarnaise sauce with a hint of "Louie Louie" spice. It's very good. I top it off with "Sympathy for the Devil" - Devilishly daring Devils food cake with ice cream and whipped cream.

It turns out this is actually one of the more popular franchises in Iceland. They also have opened shops in Denmark, Spain, The Czech Republic and even China. My brother is so impressed that he is going to see about getting a franchise for the US when we get back.

We wander around downtown Reykjavik for a while, past the US Embassy, which is closed this time of night, and poke our heads into various night clubs. This is definitely a place worth coming back to, as well, but we've already decided on tomorrow's adventures... an early morning flight from Iceland to Inverness in Scotland, and then to see if we can't rent a float plane and go land on Loch Ness. After that, it's down to Stonehenge.

LEG	Start	Start Time	Land	Land Time	Distance	Trip Time	Fuel Used
1	CYYR Goose Bay, NF	05:50 GMT	BGBW Narsarsauq, Greenland	10:00 GMT	674 NM	4 hr 10 min	210 gal
2	BGBW Narsarsauq, Greenland	11:00 GMT	BIRK Reykjavik, Iceland	16:00 GMT	667 NM	5 hr 0 min	250 gal
Day Total					1341 NM	9 hr 10 min	460 gal
Trip Total					2335 NM	17 hr 30 min	806 gal

Pictures

It's a beautiful morning in Goose Bay!	Even early in the morning, I've got to wait for someone to land, and someone ahead of me to leave
A quick shot of the sunrise from the cockpit.	It's a beautiful morning. I hope the clouds break before we reach Greenland.
The coast of southern Greenland looms off the left side.	Pick a fjord, any fjord.
Just some of the great scenery in Greenland	The Dash-7 is the workhorse of the Greenland Air fleet.
Taking a look down at the ice pack of Greenland	It's a marvelous night for a moon dance.
The Sun drops behind us as we race towards Iceland.	The lobby at Hótel Loftleiðir
Our room for the night.	Tied down for the night at Reykjavik

Where we've been so far

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