Baltic Adventure - Day 3

Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen

Thursday, June 24: Copenhagen, Denmark

After breakfast we finished re-packing our luggage in preparation for our transfer to our cruise ship later in the afternoon. We decided to do some more sightseeing around Copenhagen in the morning, so we checked out of our rooms, and left our luggage with the Bell Captain in the lobby.

We set out on foot to visit Rosenborg Castle, the 17th century home of King Christian IV, which today is home to the Danish Crown Jewels and Royal Regalia. We toured the castle and visited the dungeon vault where the Crown Jewels are now housed. I'm not sure if it was ever a dungeon, but it is in the basement of the castle -- and the Crown Jewels are amazing.

Afterwards, we walked through the expansive gardens surrounding the castle and headed toward the more modern Amailienborg Palace, where the current Queen Margrethe II resides, to witness the changing of the guard. After the guards finished marching around, we toured the Palace museum where we saw many things, including the wedding dress of Mary Elizabeth Donaldson, an Australian, who married Crown Prince Frederik in a lavish royal wedding on May 14th, just one month before our arrival in Copenhagen.

After touring the palace museum, it was time to head back to the hotel, pick up our luggage, and track down our cruise ship. We hailed a cab in the middle of the palace square, and off we went to the hotel. Once we retreived our luggage, it took some doing to get it all squeezed into the cab, but we did it. And then off we went to the docks. When our driver learned that we had not seen one of Copenhagen's most famous landmarks -- or should I say seamarks? -- he insisted on stopping long enough for Dad and I to snap a couple shots of 'The Little Mermaid' -- inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale.

Our savy cab driver also knew that our cruise ship would not be found at the appointed pier, so he took us directly to the correct location, where we turned over our luggage to the porters and began our embarkation procedure for boarding Holland America's m.s. Westerdam.

The Vista Class Westerdam is a beautiful new cruise ship which joined the Holland America fleet just weeks before our trip. We would be party to her 7th sailing. The Westerdam is huge -- 951 feet long, with a passenger capacity of 1,848 and crew of 800 -- and every luxury and convenience available on a modern cruise ship. In addition to the fabulous spa facilities, casino, disco, piano bars, shops, swimming pools, hot tubs, restaurants, movie theater, live stage entertainment, the endless buffets, taco stand, pizza bar and fine food served in the Westerdam dining room, we also had a state-of-the-art Internet Cafe with satellite uplink and brand new everything! We could hardly wait to set sail. But first, there was one thing we had to get out of the way...

The mandatory lifeboat drill!

We waved 'goodbye' to Copenhagen and sailed off on our Baltic Adventure...