Day 3 -12 July 2023 – Copenhagen to Holland America “Nieuw Statendam”

This morning it is already daylight when I wake at 3am, it is lightly raining. After a 7am shower the thunder starts & the rain gets heavy, great I think, we wanted to go for a nice walk before we join the ship. I received an email that our luggage is in Copenhagen & will be delivered. As we are having breakfast I get a phone call from the delivery company, they will take our luggage direct to the ship, along with all the rest of the airline luggage for other passengers with similar issues to us. We are now living in our travel worn clothes & the white T-shirt that we received in our small emergency package from Air France.

Breakfast at the Airport Hotel is a Danish Smorgasbord, the Danish pastries are very nice, as are all the Danish cheeses & other Danish treats. We finish with some nice fresh fruit, all very tasty. There are lots of other people at breakfast who are also joining the cruise ship, mostly Americans judging by their accents. A few are wearing the same white T-shirts.

I read a few emails, respond & delete messages plus post our blog with photos before wandering downstairs & checking out. We were going to walk, bus, train, walk to the cruise ship, however, it is raining heavily. There is a taxi stand in front of the hotel & as we get there a taxi pulls up & we get in, the taxi is a new E class Mercedes, very nice. The drive to the cruise ship terminal in the rain is pleasant & the taxi owner, a very friendly Pakistani man living in Denmark for the past 20 years gives us a great commentary while pointing out all the landmarks & features of the city. He explains that a lot of the new buildings & apartments have been built on land only recently reclaimed from the sea & they are very expensive apartments.

There are 3 cruise ships in port & we only have a very short dash in the rain into the terminal. Check in is relatively quick and we are on the ship at around 1pm. Our stateroom, as they call cabins, is quite small with a balcony, more than enough for the two of us.  We enjoy the view from our balcony across to Sweden for a little while. We go for a wander around the ship, the layout is the same as the other Holland America ship we have travelled on, the Westerdam. We stop on deck 9 for lunch & have a selection from the vast array of food on offer, another delicious smorgasbord. After lunch we explore the ship a little more, we sat at the Observation Deck for a while. On return to our room, unfortunately we find NO LUGGAGE, bugger. We watch a movie/snooze a bit before dinner, still trying to catch up with the jetlag.

Not long after we return from dinner there is a knock on the door & Tereza’s bag has arrived, a sigh of relief. We go up to the Observation Deck to watch as the ship exited out of the sound between Denmark & Sweden, there are lots of ships & small boats plying the water, it is busy. Back into our state room, we wait for a while & after my bag does not show I went to the service desk to see if they could help. I was one of many in the same situation with no luggage. At the service desk they gave him a bag with a tooth brush, small tube of tooth paste & a small stick of deodorant (after all they don’t want him to stink too much).  They also offered free laundry, I wonder if he is supposed to walk around naked while they wash the only clothes that he has on. The shop on board is useless, no socks or undies.  We found a pair socks, skivvies & a warm top amongst my clothes that fit him. It is still light when we go to bed around 11pm.