Aarhus, Denmark/End Of The Holland America Westerdam Baltic Cruise/Departing Copenhagen   August 8 & 9, 2005

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We didn’t arrive into Aarhus until 11:30 AM this morning.  Matt finally woke up with one of his famous hangovers.  He blamed the damn German beer.  We woke up and went to breakfast, where I had two eggs over easy and French toast.  Matt felt terrible so ran back to the room where he is still asleep now at 12:36 PM.  I went down and bought my ship model of the Westerdam for my office then had to head to the Vista Lounge to hear the cruise director talk about check out tomorrow.  He said he was going to keep it short and sweet but we were there for 45 minutes as he honed his stand up routine.  The brought the entire crew out who sang us a song and then it was over.  I wandered the ship some and took some pictures of some ship areas.  I’ve been typing this for the last hour.  I got my main bag with my million souvenirs packed so I’m ahead of the game right now.   I’ll have to roust Matt now so we can go see Aarhus. 

Well Matt still feels terrible and I’m getting some perverse pleasure from his pain, which seems to annoy him and I don’t know why.  We went up to our last lunch at 1:55 PM right before the sushi bar and buffet closed at 2:00 PM.  I had pork loin, seared tuna, sashimi raw tuna and salmon, sushi and avocado boats with salmon mousse on top.  It was outstanding.  Matt had all the same except for the pork loin.  The buffet guy likes Matt because he gave him his seared tuna almost raw while mine was well done.  I went down to mail some postcards and Matt’s showering.  I don’t know if we are going to go into Aarhus or not since it’s raining.    

Matt even though he just brought me pizza is a babbling selfish bastard.  We are in the room and he keeps asking me what time it is and inane questions about everything on television.  We are in the room now after our one-hour walk around Aarhus.  This cruise could have really avoided this stop.  There was nothing to see here at all and I saw Tom from Murfreesboro who said they went on a 2-½ hours tour and there wasn’t anything to see on that either.  We had come to the same conclusion that I’d have rather spent another day in Stockholm or Warnemunde.  Must eliminate Matt, he’s driving me insane with stupid questions.  Will it never end?  Note to self, no trips longer than 10 days with Matt ever again.  He is packing now and maybe this will slow down the constant nagging.  (By the way I am writing all of this just because he keeps asking if I’m writing about him)  Hopefully the scotch he has left will be consumed as a sort of self-medication.  

The cruise ends tomorrow and I will definitely suggest Holland America to people.  The ship is just beautifully decorated, very classy.  The food has been amazing.  I haven’t had anything I haven’t loved.  All the ships crew are great people.  In fact the only problem I might have is they are too attentive.  It can get a little overwhelming all the help everyone is trying to give.  Something like getting a dessert can be like running a gauntlet at times. 

The only minor problems we had were the tender ride in Visby, the terrible performance by Bill Acosta, the under selling of Warnemunde as opposed to Rostock, and the stop in Aarhus.  All very minor problems that were either uncontrollable like the tender ride for me or could be fixed.

I’ve been home a couple of days and will attempt to capture the last few days of the trip which were pretty uneventful compared to the rest of the trip.  We got up with about a 7:30 AM wake up call not knowing when we’d be called to leave the ship.  After showering we went up to get our last meal in the Lido Dining Room.  I had two eggs over easy with French toast. As usual I was told by the egg guy that these were the best eggs over easy I’d ever have.  We ate a couple of tables away from the cousins from Murfreesboro and said goodbye to them.  

I think it was about this time when Matt and I were just shooting the breeze while waiting to be called that I made up stories about Matt being a super hero named “Hangover Man”, since he was working on another hangover.  Hangover Man of course would be a dark super hero like Batman.  He would have friends like Bloody Mary Girl and his faithful ward Aspirin Boy.  His power would be transferring the excruciating pain of his hangover to his archenemies like the Friends of Bill W.  Matt then explained to me that he had varying degrees of hangovers like the creeper and the freebie along with a few others.  I of course asked if hangovers could be combined like a creeping freebie, which Matt told me they could.  This bit became lots of fun during the last couple of days.  

Our flight wasn’t until 2:30 PM and I never filled out our card for departure.  We wanted to be able to stay on the ship as long as possible because we didn’t want to spend any money in Copenhagen.  We were the last group called at about 10:00 AM to depart the ship.  This actually worked well for another reason on top of our wasting time reason.  Since we were the last to be called all the luggage was gone and there were maybe 20-30 bags left in the departure area.  We saw Bill Moser and his wife who were staying in Copenhagen for a few days after the cruise.  We talked to them while waiting for a cab and suggested they get the Copenhagen Card, which they said they would.  We got our cab and said goodbye to the Moser’s and the ship. 

I think we got ripped off by our cab driver taking us to the ship on the first day as the fare back to the station was only 100 Danish Krona.  The station was not that far from the Marriott, which cost us 150 Danish Krona.  We got tickets to take the train back to the Copenhagen Airport, which I put on a credit card to make things easy.  Well that wasn’t the case but we got lucky.  For one of the few times on the trip someone asked for our tickets.  I gave him what I got out of the machine and was told they weren’t the tickets but the receipt for the tickets.  I was told if I waited a little more the tickets would have printed out.  What kind of machine gives you the receipt before the tickets?  Well the guy had a heart and asked how far we were going which and when we told him the airport he let us slide with only the receipt.  The airport was about one minute down the line from where he asked us about our tickets. 

We had lots of time until the plane left.  We checked our bags.  Mine was a little heavy and I had to take it down to the Odd Shaped Baggage counter.  They had a little crane to pick up the heavy baggage.  Matt thought this was a little bit of overkill but not a bad idea. 

Continue To Frankfurt, Germany August 9-11, 2005

Return To Warnemunde, Germany August 7, 2005