Copenhagen Friday 15 August 2014

I slept very well all night and wasn’t up till my 6.45am alarm went off; Ladies – you’ll understand my horror at discovering that I’d forgotten my eye shadow! I never go anywhere with naked eyes! But listen – if you use an Avon glimmerstick eye liner, it works as a smudge eye shadow as well! That’s a free tip! J I reorganised my bags and checked out, then back to Baresso for another good latte and some wifi – the hotel wifi is pretty poor and sometimes was limited or unavailable.

This last walk prompted a reflection: why can’t we leave our pushbikes anywhere in Sydney without security chains, etc?

Look at the picture: you just prop the bike against the wall, or slide the wheel into a stand, and leave it! I realised on this walk that I had very quickly become comfortable in this town and it simply took the settling in time to adjust to a foreign country again. The taxi to the port was very quick and only cost about $40 with the tip (170 + 30dkn). We passed the overnight ferry that crosses to Oslo every day – a popular quick trip for the locals on both sides of the water.

At the cruise port, Holland America had its usual impeccable organisation operating. Reassuring porters grabbed the bags from the taxi drivers and pointed the way to the passenger entrance. The queues were in full force but check in was quick and once it came time to start boarding, they moved very quickly. (The obligatory boarding picture, of course). I had come early but was very glad I did.

Reality is that cruising is a couple world, so I had a few difficult times during the day: reality bites!

Having found my nice little verandah stateroom, aft on the port side (back end on the left for you landlubbers!), I unpacked the few things I had in my back pack and went up to the Lido for lunch. My bags arrived and I was able to unpack. Even with one person, there’s never enough room, although I know we were spoiled with our suites in recent years!

Lifeboat drill was 3.15 and then off we sailed at 4.00pm. I went to Mass at 5.00pm and will probably go to the vigil or Sunday.  Sadly so far there’s no indication of a non-denominational service this cruise; they had a Jewish Shabbat service tonight and there was a table having their Shabbat meal across from ours. Dinner was very nice; My dinner mates are nice, elderly; Bob and Audrey from Calgary, Canada sat across from me and Bob talked quite a bit; Audrey has a bit of a speech impediment (similar to Parkinsons). I need to catch up with the names of the other three again tonight – it was really noisy and the man sitting on my left was deaf in his right ear, so difficult to get his attention to talk to him.

 I went for a few laps on Promenade and took some great shots of the changing light moving to sunset. Twilight wasn’t all that long and now at 10.00pm it’s very dark. I got a hot milk from Explorations and then it was bed time.