Wanderings and Ramblings : The Queen! The Queen!

Our ship to Norway set sail out of Copenhagen, Denmark. Thursday was a holiday, and we used it to drive up. The traffic was very good and there is only one toll plaza between our house and Copenhagen (at the 19 km bridge onto the island of Zealand)--which made for a much faster and easier drive than we we go through France, Spain or Italy.

Making a guess on what traffic might be like, we had expected to pull up to our hotel around 8:00 or so, but actually arrived shortly before 6:00! So, we were off to a very nice start.

After a relaxing night, we set off towards the brand new cruise terminal at 9:30--having reservations to meet with the Park Via parking valets nearby at 10:00. Unfortunately, at 10 we were stuck in a maze of closed streets with no marked detours in downtown Copenhagen. Every new route the Navi sent us on, led onto yet another closed street. At one point we were stuck on a one way street that then closed with no warning and the ONLY option was to turn into a parking garage.

It was nearly 11:00 before we made it to the poor Park Via guys. Unlike in Germany, these guys wore uniforms and we felt more comfortable handing over our keys. Also, unlike Germany, we did not have to move into a van for the final drive to the ship; we followed the Park Via car right up to the ship, unloaded our things and then one of their people took our car from there to the parking area. That was nice.

By the time we had messed around with all that construction, I needed to use the restroom, so I did not dally taking photos of the new terminal. It is pretty basic and just a concrete warehouse type thing (maybe they only had tents before, like in Civitavecchia?). It was fine, but nothing special and one problem (IMO) is the complete lack of restrooms outside of the secured area--which meant a delay for me in getting to one.

The terminal was not crowded and there were no line to check in,

so we were through the process and onboard in about 20 minutes. YAY, let the vacation begin!

I did not take many photos of the ship, because I posted plenty of those last May when we sailed the Legend. Here is one of the nice, empty pool deck for you:

We had lunch, it was particularly good quality in the buffet this trip (but the tables are still ridiculously low to the ground) and Dave and I enjoyed breaking in the drink packages we bought for the first time ever on this trip (I will do a separate post write up on that later).

We had learned, thanks to a Danish poster on Cruise Critic, that Queen Margareth would be dedicating the new terminal at 2:30. Thank goodness the poster had told us, not one word about this was mentioned on the ship, either in announcements or the written schedule! Only a handful of people, all how knew about it ahead of time, had the joy of watching it from on deck--and it was fun to see. I have no idea why Royal would choose to ignore such an interesting thing.