Boarding day for our Cruise on the Zuiderdam

Tuesday 9th August 2016

Today we head off on our cruise, with boarding commencing at 1pm. A wander down the road for breakfast and a last minute look around fills out the morning.

After breakfast at Nyhavn, we walked down to the main harbour and along the waterfront to our hotel.

We walked around the boardwalk in front of the Royal Playhouse

The Opera House is just across the water

We can see the cruise terminal in the distance.

On the way back to our hotel we walked along a finger wharf that had a number of mostly German cruising yachts tied up there and saw this Hanse 445 called Aloha (our hotel is in the background).

We then walked along the waterfront to the Royal Palace to see what we could find out about the big blue yacht tied up there. Sadly the flag did not turn out to be Australian, but the boat (named "Christopher" was registered in Georgetown). It was 150 ft long and the crew were busy cleaning the waterline.

We checked out of the hotel just before noon and caught a taxi to the cruise terminal It looked quite close from the hotel, but it was a bit of a tortuous route to get there and took about 20 minutes. Boarding was well under way when we arrived.

Whilst there were lots of people, the boarding process ran very smoothly and we didn’t seem to have to wait too long before we were on board and in our cabin. For this cruise we chose an aft cabin, right at the stern of the ship, with a bigger than normal balcony looking aft. It also appears to be a bit bigger than the side cabins, but it might just be the layout.

Departure from port is delayed by about 40 minutes due to the late arrival of some passengers owing to flight delays, so after the emergency evacuation drill, we set out to explore the ship.

Eventually, at around 4.45 pm, there is activity on the dock and lines are being cast off. Our destination overnight is to Warnemunde in Germany, the Port for Berlin. Apparently the passage is across a lot of shallow water, and the Captain announced that due to current tides, we would have to take the long way around, burning a bit more fuel, but still arriving on time at around 6.30 am.

Our balcony

We had a drink on the upper deck to watch the departure , and got talking to a couple of other Australians from Perth. They, like a lot of the passengers on board are only doing the Baltic part of the cruise. It will interesting to see how many we have on board for the Copenhagen to New York leg.