We surprised ourselves by booking a cruise only 7 weeks before sailing. This one was our present for Larry's 70th birthday. Crystal Cruises turns 35 years old this year and there are planned celebration sailings on both Crystal Serenity and Crystal Symphony with dignitaries such as former captains and cruise directors as well as senior corporate management and other special guests. We had known about this sailing for a while but didn't think about booking until Larry's birthday weekend when we took another look and decided to go ahead. Not least of the reasons for booking was that Chef Nobu Matsuhisa was going to be on board and offering a couple of special dinners. Nobu is the chef behind Umi Uma and the Sushi Bar, the Asian restaurant on Crystal ships, a favourite of ours since they were established.
Not only was the short booking time new for us, but the cruise, roundtrip Copenhagen, was only 1 week long! We figure that our last 7 day cruise with no time added on as a pre- or post-cruise package was our very first river cruise in 2009 in France. Because the cruise was short and jam-packed, I'm now writing the blog after our return home. There was literally no other time to do it!
We flew to Copenhagen one day early, arriving on Monday July 14, so we would be ready for the week once we boarded. Our hotel was across the street from Tivoli Garden, but we decided not to go as we had been there on our previous visit to the city. Instead, I, accompanied by Larry, made a knitter's pilgrimage to the globally famous yarn shop Knitting for Olive to buy some yarn and a pattern. Yes, it was a 40 minute walk each way, but we needed the exercise after being on the overnight flight to Munich and morning flight on to Copenhagen. I already knew what pattern and yarn I was looking for, so Larry didn't have to sit among the ladies in the shop for too long!
And in the evening we had dinner at a local restaurant, Axelborg Bodega. It was more a pub really, and had excellent local Danish cuisine. There were lots of locals there as well, proving that it was a good choice.
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| The entrance to the restaurant |
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| I had a plate of Plaice cooked two ways and Shrimp |
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| Larry had a delicious pork stew that included pork loin, cocktail sausages, bacon and mushrooms |
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| The interior. Most of the people here were locals. |
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| Dessert - called an apple 'cake' it was more like an apple parfait with berries and whipped cream....we shared it. |
We took a taxi to the ship late Tuesday morning. Fortunately Serenity was docked at Langelinie, the facility within walking distance of the old city. It didn't take long to be checked through to board...and of course, the first person we ran into was Marco, formerly the chief Concierge and now the Front Office Manager. As soon as we stepped on board we came across Andrew Triplow, one of the Crystal Society Host/Future Cruise Consultants. We've known him since our first cruises on Harmony.
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| First lunch on board included one of my favourites - the Chinois Chicken Salad. They moved it to the Trident Grill when Tastes became Beefbar. |
In the evening, there was a 35th Anniversary Welcome Party hosted by cruise director Russ Grieve. Russ has been a cruise director on Crystal Symphony for a number of years, but we had never met him. He just moved to Serenity to take over after one of our favourite cruise directors, Rick Spath, retired. Here he is, starting the show with a rendition of the Crystal theme song, Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World.
Another welcome from Captain Birger Vorland, and introduction of the ship's officers and special guests on the cruise. The biggest applause actually came for Chef Nobu.
On Wednedsay we had a full day in Copenhagen again, so we took the opportunity to check out a couple of areas we hadn't seen before. We took the shuttle bus in to the old town and walked back to the ship. The weather was supposed to include potential rain showers, so we wore our rain jackets, but it turned out that we only needed them as windbreakers.
Our first stop was at Nyhavn, the 'new' port which dates back to the 17th Century. The 350 year old buildings are painted in all colours and the whole area was buzzing with people. Many of the buildings house restaurants and bars, with a couple of hotels thrown in. Every place had an umbrella-covered patio and some of the menu signs looked very tempting!
After that we made our way to the King's Garden where Rosenborg Castle is located. It is a huge public park that was also filled with people as they day was getting nicer by the minute. Copenhagen doesn't always have sunny and warm weather, so this was an apparently unexpected bonus.
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| Unfortunately the window cleaners, with the yellow bucket hoist, started working just as we got there |
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From King's Garden we passed through the Kastellet, or the Citadel which dates back to 1626. Another public park area in the city, it is also still used as a military barracks.
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| This church is just outside the citadel walls |
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| One of the buildings and entrance gates |
Once through Kastellet, we were almost back at the waterfront so we followed the signs for 'den lille Havfrue' and found the Little Mermaid sculpture - along with a crowd of people. For such a small sculpture - and she is quite small - she's very popular. I did eventually get a couple of nice photos, and we set off back to the ship.
We left Copenhagen at 7 p.m., heading toward the tip of the Jutland Peninsula at Skagen.
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