Tuesday, June 9, 2015
We went to the show last night. It was changed much more for
the new cast than the last one was. There were at least 2 completely new songs
and I don’t know what came out to add them. Julie once again said Jean Ann Ryan
was in the audience as well as Heather, her choreographer. They really do a
good job and I find it hard to imagine that NCL entertainment will be better
when it replaces them.
We slept well with very calm seas last night. I woke up
startled a few times as Clay’s machines were making noises and I kept thinking that
he had set an alarm. Then he would sleep through it and I would realize that we
don’t reach Copenhagen until noon. He told me later that he had left his tablet
logged onto the Internet for over 11 hours by accident and that was probably
email arriving each time. It is a good thing we have free Internet or that would
have been a several hundred dollar mistake!
We got a slow start and then Clay came back from breakfast and
went to sleep again. There is not much on the program this morning anyway. They
are having needlepoint again, but I have made so little progress since last
time that I am not going today.
We are to dock at Langelinie Pier in Copenhagen today. It is
apparently a ways out of town. The Currents says you can walk, but that the
port will run a shuttle from the dock to the Wax Museum next to Tivoli. We have
never been here so that doesn’t tell me much. The good news is that we have the
first of our Alla Tours booked here and so we don’t need to know anything. We
both also think we have a different Alla Tour booked here when we return so we
don’t need to learn our way around. I suppose I should double check this in
case, we need to do some research while here! We do have a different Alla tour
here next time.
We docked on the port side. We have a view of the harbor.
Both sides have scenic views.
Before it was even time to meet the guide, the day took a
wrong turn. Clay is a mathematician and our money guy. He has tables and charts
and a list of currencies. He has been working on this for a while. There were
at least 2 ATMs right outside the ship. Clay went to one and then realized that
he had gotten far too much money. I wasn’t really sure why he was getting Danish
Kroner (DKK) anyway. Our tour was covered. Alla’s instructions said to tip the
guide and driver in Euros and we had those. It wasn’t clear we were going to
buy anything yet and we don’t have a lot of time in Denmark. Clay spent a good
part of the day negotiating to sell his DKK to other tour participants, usually
at a loss.
Bad news was that we had our first really unacceptable tour today
with Alla Tours. We have to assume this was a one off bad day and carry on
since the majority of our remaining touring is through Alla. However, we have asked
to cancel the other Copenhagen tour we have scheduled here with Alla. Oceania
had basically the same tour for $179. We are used to seeing O charge 3 and 4
times for tours what you can buy them elsewhere, so we seriously overpaid for a
poorly designed tour. The other thing is that Alla had said the maximum tour
size was 24 and there were over 30 people on our bus in our group. So, anyway
we saw the Little Mermaid. That was on our list of things to do here and it was
a 15 minute walk from the ship. Oceania led a guided 3-hour walking tour there
and all but one of the other places we went for $69. The other things we saw
were mostly palaces and castles with a guided tour of Rosenborg Castle and to
see the crown jewels being the only things that we actually paid to do and
wouldn’t have done on our own. Of course, that was also the only thing that
would not have made our top 10 list of things to do in Copenhagen. Our tour was
already way off track and schedule because of the time spent just sitting in heavy
traffic when the alarm went off in Rosenburg Castle. Suddenly, the seemingly
ornamental guards started running around shouting and locking down the
facility. They locked us in and we waited for the police to arrive. Simon, our
guide, announced that his paid time with us had ended 20 minutes earlier and we
were now on our free time. Fair enough, things happen. But prior to the
lockdown, all the traffic that had delayed us should have been predictable. Anyway,
we hope to not have any repeats of tours like that when we could have spent a
perfectly enjoyable day wandering on our own at very little expense even in a
town as expensive as this one. The highlight of Clay’s day was when we went
into the 7-Eleven and he bought a Carlsburg Elephant beer and drank it on the
bus when it returned to pick us up after free time.
We went to Terrace for dinner tonight. I tried the local
meatball dish, Frikadeller. That was a mistake. It was full of parts and neither
of us could I identify what kind of meat it was. They were serving it with
mashed potatoes, so I got some. As the potatoes oozed across my plate, I
realized they were serving polenta too so I got some. Clay asked when I got
back if I had 2 mashed potatoes. No, and he guessed wrong which was which. The show tonight is Duo Yalba, They are Mexicans and play something like Mariachi music according to Julie. Clearly, we passed on that.
It did not rain on us today! I got a new country and I got a new map pin in my travel map!
Tomorrow we have what we always knew was an iffy touring day
in Berlin which is hours from the port of Warnemunde. We’ll hope for the best.
