Nuuk is not a city where you can count on a hotel spa. Greenland's capital is small, its hotel stock thinner still, and if you're the kind of traveller who builds a daily sauna into your routine — as one travel writer clearly is — your options narrow fast.

There is essentially one place to stay in Nuuk with sauna access: Inuk Hostels, which despite the name offers cabin-style accommodation rather than dorm beds. But the sauna there isn't a free perk. A private one-hour session in a barrel sauna with a cold plunge runs about $120, and you can bring up to seven friends to split the cost. Come solo and that's a steep price for a sweat.

The workaround? The city's Thai massage parlours. Several of them run infrared saunas, and the writer picked Smile Thai on Jens Kreuzmannip Aqq. 2, a short walk from the centre. A 30-minute sauna session cost 250 crowns — roughly $39. A sauna-plus-massage combo was available at fair prices too, though a late-afternoon museum crawl (the National Museum and the Art Museum are both worth your time) left only 45 minutes before closing, so it was heat only.

A few honest caveats from the visit: the infrared cabin was switched off when he arrived, so there was a wait while it warmed up. The upside was that staff kept him supplied with water, tea and fruit while it did. By the time he stepped out at 6pm, the temperature outside had turned chilly — exactly the conditions where a sauna earns its keep.

So why should this matter to anyone planning a Greenland trip? Because Nuuk rewards travellers who adjust expectations. It's a compact capital of roughly 20,000 people where cultural sights, fjord views and unexpectedly good Asian food sit within walking distance, but where standard big-city amenities — gyms, spas, extensive hotel facilities — simply don't exist at scale. If fitness and recovery routines matter to you, the practical answer is to either book the barrel sauna at Inuk Hostels as a group splurge, or do what the locals apparently do and head to a Thai massage parlour.

It's also a neat microcosm of travelling in Greenland generally: infrastructure is limited, prices are high, and the best experiences often come from improvised solutions and talking to people. A $39 sauna with a plate of fruit and a pot of tea in the world's smallest capital is a decent metaphor for the whole country — modest on paper, memorable in practice.

The writer is publishing a series of posts from his Greenland trip this week, including one adventure immediately after the sauna that he describes as comically unsuccessful — worth following if Nuuk is on your list.