Day 13 - Wed - 08/19/26 - Copenhagen, Denmark Turnaround Day

 Early this morning the Sapphire Princess arrived at Berth #2 in the new cruise port area.  I could feel the rumble of the thrusters as we gently approached the pier.  But it was not enough to cause me to want to get up.  Finally around 7am we got up and began preparing for our day.  We finished packing as we have to change rooms from the port side (left) to the starboard side of the ship.  We just have to pack our loose things and the room steward will transport it to the new room when it is ready and while we are off of the ship.  We just had to wait for the former occupants of the new room to vacate it so we could move our valuables from one safe to another.

After breakfast and just before the required 8:30am room vacation, we were able to move the safe items from the old to the new safe. We gathered up our normal touring items plus our passports and in-transit cards and scanned off the ship.  The security person doing the scanning acknowledged that he knew we were returning later and not passengers who were disembarking the ship.  Once outside the terminal we found the Hop On Hop Off (HOHO) pickup location.  Both the RED line and the Stromma line (ours) use the same area.  The RED line seemed to have more passengers.  Our bus eventually came and it transported us to the Little Mermaid stop #5 where we had to transfer to a red route Stromma bus to tour the city.  Our plan was to take it to a main transfer point at stop #12 and get off to do some shopping.  Paul, a fellow who sings karaoke with Angela, broke his glasses and needed some replacement reading glasses.  So we accepted the challenge of finding him some.  We tried a pharmacy and a bookstore but their glasses were over $30/pair.  I once again loaded my GPSMYCITY app and found a walking path to see some sights.  On one main shopping street, we found a discount variety store and they had glasses for $5 which was much more what they were worth.  So we bought two pair. 

We continued strolling and eventually ended up in Kongens Nytorv square (King's Square) where we found a McDonald's for a nice lunch.  After lunch we walked over to the HOHO bus stop and were told that the black line bus (Cruise Terminal Express) we needed would be there by 1:40.  Then it became 2:10 and the rains came.  An empty Stromma bus arrived and we were able to wait out the rain until our bus came closer to 2:30pm.  Fortunately it did arrive and there was lots of room on it.  It made one stop at the Little Mermaid and then made its way in heavy traffic to the cruise port.

When we arrived at the cruise port at 3pm, I was stunned to see giant lines and congestion in the terminal building.  We learned that the computer system used by the Danes to process our exit from the EU went down and they had to copy everyone's passports.  There were new boarding guests having to wait 2-3 hours to board.  As in transit passengers, all we had to to was clear security and then get in the EU border control line.  Fortunately the system was finally working and around 8 officers were scanning passports and checking fingerprints.  It took about 20 minutes to clear the border control and then we scanned once more back on to the ship.  We went to our new stateroom and our medallions worked and all of our personal belongings had been moved.  

We unpacked and chilled out after a challenging day in the rain and border control. We met our new steward, Shahid (Sha for short) from India. We had a pleasant chat with him before heading up to the LIDO for dinner at 5:30pm.   We heard the departure announcement from the Captain, but it was a long time afterwards before the ship thruster moved us in the starboard direction so we could pass. By the Aidanova cruise ship that occupied berth #3 in front of us. The ships were bow to bow.  That ship is nearly 200,000 gross tons and holds nearly 6,000 passengers.  Our ship is a modest 118,000 gross tons and holds just over 3,000.  Soon we were out in the open sea heading north.  Tomorrow is a sea day and Friday we'll be in the Shetland Islands.  Unfortunately another guest who was joining the ship today had to cancel their cruise due to a family emergency.  They had a tour scheduled in the Shetland Islands and we offered to take it over which was successful. 

Our evening entertainment was a 

powerful soul diva singer Janine Johnson.  She could really belt out the tunes.  After the show we met Allwyn,  our new cruise director, and he remembered us from our Majestic Princess cruise from Australia to Seattle.  It was one of our favorite Princess cruises so far and he was on the entertainment staff.  Afterwards there was a simple game show called Strikeout in which the participants had to guess the year a song came out.  It was fun and challenging since I didn't know many of the songs or artists.











Now that we are heading west, we gain another hour tonight.  We have quite a few more time changes before reaching Boston.

I'll also note that just over 1,000 guests are back to back returning cruisers.  Roughly 2,000 guests are newly embarking.


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