We visited Ilulissat for a two day-one night stay in July 2017. An unexpected opening for a trip arose and, in what was a sad sign of the times, we said we had better go to Greenland while the ice was still there.

We arrived by plane from Reykjavik. The experience of simply flying over Greenland was something else - the ice-capped mountains, the glaciers calving into the sea, the never ending white blanket, the blue pools of water that sometimes accumulated on top of the ice, the then amazing sight of land with no ice covering at all! The plane then banked directly over the mouth of the icefjord on its approach to the tiny airport, with the majestic icebergs of Disko Bay on view in all their glory.

Arriving by taxi near midday, we amused ourselves by taking a walk at the harbour, passing the ubiquitous Irish pub, having a musk ox burger at a cafe and eyeing up the guns for sale over the counter in the local Spar shop. After some minutes at the small local Knud Rasmussen Museum (including a depressing display about how far back the glacier has retreated in recent years), we walked through the colourful houses built into the hillsides with their stilts and amongst the cotton growing wild in the town towards the mouth of the icefjord.

After clambering over the rocks, we sat for ages largely by ourselves in the sunlight and watched the multi-shaded wall of ice, the icebergs drift, the creaking of the ice and the calving. Then three whales swam in amongst the ice, diving and spouting below us all the time we were there. When we set up our camera on a rock to take a photo of us with the ice in the background, one of them even spouted right at that moment on camera - providing a treasured memory.

An unfortunately unwanted memory came about as a result of that walk. The waves of mosquitoes overcame a gap in my insect repellant and bit my finger causing it to massively swell around my wedding ring, turning a shade of blue by the time we got back to Reykjavik the following night - I just about avoided the hospital!

We overnighted in a B&B. It was our first experience of the midnight sun - waking up at 1.30am it was still daylight! I will never forget our breakfast the next morning. The entire time, an old lady who did not speak sat opposite us in a tiny room and just watched us slowly eat the breads on offer. Still though, to walk out in the morning and witness the glacial landscape to have changed completely from the night before was just breathtaking.

The second day we took a lengthy boat trip (rather no frills if I remember, using the company World of Greenland) to the Eqi glacier further up Disko Bay, known as the calving glacier. Along the way, we passed icebergs of all shapes and sizes before coming up to the wall of ice which again was bathed in sunlight. It shed its ice frequently and you couldn’t see any water around the boat, just floating ice. Unfortunately there were no major calves in our time there but it was still special to see nonetheless.

We whiled away our evening on the local hotel balcony taking time lapses of the ice floating by, before our taxi to the airport for our overnight flight. 

Pricey - yes. Flights €625 each one way(!), €140 for a night in a low range B&B, over €250 each for the boat trip to the Eqi glacier, meals are expensive. I’d pay it again in the morning though. It’s OUV is unquestioned, it’s beauty is superlative and it’s definitely in my top 3 WHS so far. Go while you still can.