Wednesday – August 29, 2012

DAY ONE – Copenhagen

In terms of European time, this day started in Newark. We were supposed to depart before 6 pm on Tuesday, which would have been midnight European time. But there was an outage on United's computers in Newark just before the original boarding time and NO flights were being boarded. (Did that make the news?) After a two hour delay, they started boarding international flights manually and then it took much longer to get the paperwork for the pilots to take off, then of course all the international flights were ready to go at the same time. We were finally in the air at 7:40 pm EDT, or 1:40 am in Europe.

Now the question was, would our flight to Stockholm arrive in time for us to make our connecting flight to Copenhagen? We watched “Mirror, Mirror” then I turned off my display to try to get some sleep, the kind where you wander in and out of consciousness. Karen never did go to sleep and I noticed that she watched “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,”a movie I want to see, but I was determined to get at least a few zzzz's.

We arrived at 8:30 and our connecting flight was at 9:15. We had to go through passport control, but not customs, as our luggage was checked to Copenhagen. We arrived breathless at the gate at 9:10, only to discover that the flight was delayed slightly anyway because there had been an SAS system outage in Copenhagen earlier that delayed flights there! Is that divine intervention or very weird coincidence? Or are our airline systems being taken over by extra-terrestrials?

So all is well that ends well, right? Wait, where is Karen's red suitcase? Trek down to SAS Services. Fortunately I had the baggage receipts and she said immediately, “That bag missed your flight in Stockholm but is coming in on the next flight in about 20 minutes. Finally, all's well that ends well!

The Tivoli Hotel where we are staying is very nice and relatively (by European standards) reasonable in price. They provided two complimentary tickets to Tivoli Gardens, which was high on my list to see in our limited time here. After a two hour nap, we walked to the Gardens, which were theoretically 0.6 mile away, but it seemed twice that far to me.

Tivoli Gardens is a world famous amusement park that is quite different from Disney or even Cedar Point. Its gardens are magnificent, with fountains and lots of green space. Yes it has rides, but they are not the attraction for most people. There are shows of various types going on all the time, but especially in the evening. Tonight there was a pantomime show, quite well done by obviously professional ballet dancers, but with a bit of slapstick humor to keep the kids laughing. That was followed by a rock concert, which we did not stay for (surprise, surprise). There must be 40 restaurants, all terrifically overpriced, but of course everything is overpriced in Europe, especially Scandinavia, as I'm learning. We had a nice small luncheon plate of fish, beef, and chicken salad, plus a beer for me and a Coke for Karen. $70! Most dinners would have been over $200! Everyone must be rich in Denmark! Who said, “There's something rotten in Denmark.”? Oh, right, Shakespeare.

But actually, it's a beautiful city and the people are polite and friendly. And everyone I met so far speaks English, which is very fortunate, because I know zero words in Danish. Tomorrow we are going to take a walking tour of downtown, then we board our home for the next four weeks, the Emerald Princess!

PS:  Reading back over the blog, I realize I was really whining a lot about the prices.  I promise never to do that again.  Of course, never say never....

Entrance to Tivoli Gardens

Just one of many beautiful gardens

The Restaurant where we had lunch = Faergekroens Bryghus

Hey, I have to get in at least one picture!

Pantomime Play

Blog – Tuesday, August 28, 2012

WE LEAVE FOR A MONTH LONG SCANDINAVIAN/ATLANTIC CRUISE!

I work really hard at being totally prepared for a trip – packing checklists, long to-do lists, etc. So it is disappointing when things go wrong, but of course they always do. Last week I upgraded my phone to a Droid RAZR so that I would have a global-ready phone. Mom's phone, an old (old meaning two years) flip phone, is already global-ready. It is an Escapade by Samsung that is no longer made. But it works fine, so I went to pack up its charger from the place in the kitchen where Karen always charges it. No charger in sight. And of course Karen cannot tell me what she did with it.

So I run around the night before we leave trying to find a charger for an obsolete phone – Verizon, Wal-Mart, Radio Shack, no one could help me. I found on the internet that I could buy one for $2.99 plus 5.00 shipping, but that doesn't help me now! So the plan now is to keep her phone off except in situations in ports of call where we could potentially get separated. Then we'll turn it on. Will it last a month? I doubt it. Oh, well!

Ken picked us up at 9:00 this morning and as we started out I said, “Sure hope we have everything!” Then for no good reason I said, “Karen, you have your purse, right?” (She is never without her purse, even in the house.) She said, “Uh-huh.” Uh-oh. So I turned around and said “show me your purse” and she shook her head no. So it's off at the next exit and return to the house for it. Fortunately we had plenty of time, so no harm done.

We are still in the afterglow of our wonderful 50^th anniversary dinner/open house at Pioneer Ridge! We had 75 people for the dinner and another 70 or so for the open house. Renewal of vows, a 13 minute slide show of our 50 years of marriage, heartfelt toasts by resident Bob Stanley and by our grandson Sam and by our son, Eric. I was beginning to feel like Jimmy Stewart in “It's a Wonderful Life.” One of the highlights (if I do say so myself, but it did get a standing ovation), was Karen and me telling the story of our wedding and honeymoon, both of which had their share of humor. Perhaps I'll publish it on the blog at some point. What was amazing to most folks was to hear Karen reading from our script with a voice clear as a bell and very little hesitation. They also got a kick out of her giggling from time to time. There was a lot of love in that room, and the memories will last for a lifetime.

As I write this, I'm sitting in Newark airport waiting for our flight to Stockholm. Long flights are not the fun part of vacations, but I go into a form of stasis until we land and it's OK. We change planes in Stockholm, then land in Copenhagen, where we have a day to ourselves before boarding the Emerald Princess.

Bye for now.