Catching up is sometimes difficult. I wrote a post while we were flying into Stockholm and thought I would have plenty of time while we were in Copenhagen to write. Spare time was something we didn’t have very much of while we were there … not that we didn’t have enough time, just that there were too many things to spend the time on. So, we’ll try to do some catching up. RIght now it’s Monday evening about 10:10 p.m. and the sun has just set. We’re in the library on the ship where there is wireless internet access available at $0.40 a minute. I bought $100 worth of time (about 2 hours and 30 minutes) and will buy more if needed later in the trip. I’m not sure what kinds of internet cafes we might find available at some of the ports of call. The internet access on the Holland America ships has gotten dramatically better since the first cruise. However, the availability of places to get power has not improved. There’s only a couple of hidden power plugs in this room, probably there for the cleaning people, I’m writing this entry off line. I’ll then log in and post this so I don’t use too many mintues up while I’m just writing. I need to show Nina how to do that as well. She’s in the desk next to me writing an entry in her blog.
We arrived in Stockholm without incident, cleared passport control, and went to our gate. There was no waiting area for the flight! We took a couple of seats in a neighboring cafe and waited for the flight. It went on time and we were in Copenhagen an hour after takeoff. After a very long walk (although not as long as in Brussels), we got to baggage claim. The monitor said that the bags would be up in 20 minutes, which was a true statement. The bags came up, but none of our four suitcases arrived. The baggage helper guy looked up the information and said the bags were here, but that the scanner couldn’t read the bag labels, so they would come up on a neighboring carrosel in about 20 minutes. Sure enough, both of Nina’s bags came up about 15 minutes later. We waited, and waited, then Nina noticed they were on the original carrosel! Happy day. The luggage was all there. We were at the hotel by 11:30 a.m.
The Royal SAS Radisson Hotel is one of the luxury hotels in downtown Copenhagen directly across the street from the main tourist information center, the Hard Rock Cafe, and the famed Tovoli Gardens. When the reservations were made, we were originally going to arrive on Sunday, June 10th. Then it turned out we couldn’t get a flight combination that worked on Frequent Flier miles, so we needed to arrive on the 9th of June.As a result we ended up with two reservations; one from the 9th to the 10th and a second reservation from the 10th to the 11th. I sent the hotel an email asking that they combine the two reservations into one and further asked for early checkin as the hotel’s standard checkin is 2 p.m. I got a nice email back saying that they would take care of the reservation and would put us on the list for early checkin. Nice doesn’t mean helpful, however.
Arriving at the hotel we quickly discovered two things. The reservations were not combined and early checkin is a myth. We would have to wait two and a half hours. We walked around a while, did a little shopping at the Hard Rock Cafe, and then waited in the lobby until I got impatient. Shortly thereafter a room magically became available. This European way of thinking continually amazes me. The policy says 2 p.m. checkin so why would someone want something different?? After getting into the room we crashed for a couple of hours. Then after showers and a change of clothes, we headed out to look around the city.
Copenhagen is different than the other European cities. It’s quite spread out and not very clean. It has a very diverse population. Since the architecture wasn’t very interesting, I spent most of my pictures on people. I took many, many pictures of people. I’ll throw most of them away. I got maybe four really nice pictures and one that I really like. The sun set about 9 p.m. and we finally went back to the hotel around 10. The evening was very pleasant and it was nice to be outside. We both slept the night through and were up in mid-morning on Sunday. After breakfast we waited for our travel companions who arrived right on time. They also didn’t have a room available until 2 p.m. Very strange. We had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe, did a litte walking around, and about 1:30 p.m. the hotel found a room. That’s when I discovered that we were locked out of our room. We had only be checked in for one day. We were supposed to have checked out, were being charged a premium because checkout time was noon, and the room had been assigned to someone else. With some difficulty I maintained my temper. After intervention from an assistant manager, we got our room back, the charges were removed, and new keys to the door were issued.
We took a bus tour around the downtown. It was an interesting tour and quite informative. That evening we went over to Tivoli Gardens to find that the Queen of Denmark was coming to a concert there. We lined up and took pictures of the royal party as they arrived. She seems to be quite popular … particularly because the monarchy doesn’t cost the taxpayers anything. We had dinner at a restaurant in the Gardens and headed back to the hotel for an interrupted night’s sleep.
I’m not sure what I was expecting from the Tivoli Gardens. I think perhaps somehow I had gotten the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen associated as being somewhat similar to the English Garden in Munich. That was very wrong. Tivoli Gardens is a kind of a forerunner Disneyland. An entrance fee gets one inside. Then there are restaurants, all kinds of carnival rides, some harking back to those seen at county and state fairs in my youth. I kind of think Cony Island was something like this in its heyday.
Sleep lasted until about 2:30 a.m. Then both of us were awake and tossing and turning. We finally got up, opened the blinds, to discover it was light outside. We took lots of pictures, downloaded our pictures to the computers and went back to bed at 5:30 a.m. We met our friends at 9 for breakfast. Then it was pack back up, check out, and take a taxi to the cruise ship terminal. Our time in Copenhagen came to an end. We’re now on board the Rotterdam … very familiar territory from the previous four cruises on Holland America. We’ve had the life boat drill, dinner, been to the first show, and now at 11 p.m. it’s time to head for bed.