Tuesday August 4th, 2026

We are on a Princess cruise ship out of Copenhagen for 27 days ending in Boston on Sept 3rd.

The cruise will take us to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Norway and then back to Copenhagen where lots of people will disembark but we will stay on for another 15 days cruise which will do Scotland, England, Shetland Islands, Belfast, Ireland and then 2 ports in Canada before docking in Boston.

We flew out of Tallahassee on Tuesday the 4th and we were supposed to arrive Wednesday morning in Copenhagen unfortunately we were stuck in the Tallahassee airport for 8 hours. From 10:30am to almost 5. At first they said they were waiting on a crew to pick up the plane on Atlanta. Then it was mechanical issues and then weather issues. Of course hat meant we missed connections in Atlanta & Paris… We got rescheduled for a 10:30pm flight out of Atlanta which stopped in Amsterdam and then on to Copenhagen. We arrived in Copenhagen at 6pm and had a car and driver waiting for us but apparently our luggage decided it wanted to stay in Amsterdam for an extra day.Our driver was kind enough to stay an hour after our supposed pick up time while we reported our luggage missing. Not a great start.

We were staying in the Admiral Copenhagen which is close by everything we wanted to visit, easy walking distance. The other reason we picked that hotel was that it had air conditioning and since Europe has been hot the last several years we thought air conditioning was a good thing.

Our friends Linda and Michael from Nashville actually told us about the cruise when they booked it and we looked at the itinerary decided it was a good trip so we booked it also. We met them at the hotel and had dinner and then up to shower and to bed.

On Thursday we all went wandering with no real plans except we had a beer tour at 4pm called the Politically incorrect beer tour.

We are staying very close to Nyhaven which is a bunch of old colorful buildings right on a canal and has lots of 3 masted sailing ships. The street has tons of cafes lining one side of it.

Nyhaven

The day was quite comfortable and definitely warm for this time of the year. We walked around the pedestrian shopping street and people watched and went into a few stores but mostly just walking the city.

The dog also seems to enjoy people watching. This street artist was drawing all the flags of the world and when we passed by several hours later he had almost competed his circle of flags.

After walking around a bit we headed back to the hotel and got a light lunch and rested before we took off for our beer tour.

Our politically incorrect tour guide. He has his cooler along and you carry a small glass and he stops, explains the area, tells us stories about Denmark and opens 4 – 5 cans of beer which we pass around (to avoid him serving us which requires a liquor license) and pour our own glasses. The guide makes fun of all our nationalities and we had a very diverse group, Americans, Canadians, Welsh, New Zealand, Italy and Germany. We also heard about Denmarks unique solution to the drug problem. They have government provided buildings with nurses and they tell everyone that if they are going to shoot up come to one of the approved locations. Nurses have clean syringes and will monitor you so you are not injecting alone. They don’t supply the drugs, you have to bring your own unless you are on methadone to try and get clean and that they will supply. Our guide told us that there are 1600 registered drug users and once registered they give you a card. If you get stopped by a police officer you show them the card and they let you go. Really cuts down on costs of trials and jail time.

After the tour we went to Tivoli Gardens with is the 2nd oldest amusement park in the world. They have beautiful planting and amusement rides. As the sun goes down the lights come on and it is beautifully lit . You can buy a ticket just to walk around and enjoy the scenery or you can pay more to ride all the rides. We all passed on the rides.

It drizzled for a few moments and then a beautiful rainbow came out. you can just see the double rainbow if you use your imagination.

We had a great dinner at the park and everyone got something different.

My pork chop on the left and Kathy’s polenta is on the right. They were both delicious. we walked around for another hour admiring the different colored flowers and then headed back to the hotel. We were thrilled to get back to the hotel and our bags had arrived. we were so releived. We went to bed after asking for a later checkout which they said we could have. You have to pick a boarding time at the port to help with the crowds but Linda and Michael said they waiting in line an hour and 15 minutes. Most of the delay was going through port security. Once you got through that line the Princess portion of check in was easy.

Another interesting side note was that we got 3 different offers from Princess to move our cruise to another since this itinerary was so popular. They offered to reimburse us everything we paid and then they would give is the amount we paid towards a future cruise. When we did not accept that offer, since we were traveling with others we did not respond. A couple of days later we got a downgrade offer and if we were willing to move to a deluxe balcony (which are in a mini suite) they would give us the fare paid as on board credit and what ever we did not spend they would refund

in a check. So basically a free cruise. I was all excited about the potential to get $24,000 back but I guess they got what they needed because I never heard back from them and when we went on board our cabin number was the original. The taxi ride from the hotel to the cruise ship was longer than I thought it should be but the terminal was out in an industrial area so not east to get to.

We boarded on Friday the 7th around 1:30. Our bags showed up shortly after and we got everything put away. We watched sail away from our balcony. We met Linda and Michael for pre-dinner drinks and then we had reservations at the speciality restaurant called Makoto. This restaurant is new to all of us. We have a package though Princess that allows you to have as many specialty dining reservations as you want for no additional charge. What they have added is any extras you want become charges. So you get the set sushi /sashimi meal that includes seaweed salad, miso soup and a tuna roll, a crab roll and then several pieces of sushi. On the whole I did not like it but our waiter did bring us some miso glazed sea bass which was excellent. Supposedly this is not part of the meal and when we look on the menu they charge 25 dollars extra for the bass. So if you don’t have a package with included speciality dining you would each have to pay a cover charge ($55.00) and then you can add to it by picking something not on the included side. Could get expensive. After we all ate bits and pieces we decided we did not need to come back so we canceled our next 3 reservations.

Saturday March 8th is one of the 2 sea days we get on this cruise. It was in the low 60s and a little chilly on the open deck. We slept in and then I tried to find anyone playing Maj Jongg but no luck. We hung around for a couple of hours and then headed up to the buffet for lunch. We spent the afternoon reading in the cabin & on the balcony. The water is like glass but it has lots of streaks of green algae in it.

We had dinner in the dining room and had a good meal.

Tomorrow we are in Gdansk, Poland. We have been here before but it was a long time ago so looking forward to going back. The tempare in the high 70 but luckily no rain. We are doing a ship’s tour where they take you into Old Town Gdansk and let you wander on your own before meeting the bus to go back to the pier.