Day 12 + 13 : Copenhagen and back to Berlin

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I ran out of free wifi yesterday, so double-up on the blog today - quick entries because nothing that exciting happened either day. I'm basically just biding my time for Iceland lol.

Yesterday was the last real cruise day: Copenhagen. I'd say a good 90% of the passengers get on-get off there, so the morning was a little nutty..! Meanwhile we like strut off the gangway like that's right, we'll be back. I strutted off to catch the bus only to have him pretty much close the door on me and drive away haha. My split second indecision of getting on the bus was too long apparently.

Once we got into the city, I pretty much just showed Mom around the Old Town area and then we headed up to Nyhavn. We saw the usual in Old Town - statues, churches, fountains. Since it was Sunday morning virtually everything was closed, so we kind of motored along quite quickly. It's a beautiful city though - I really enjoyed my visit last time, so it was nice to show Mom. It was also interested to see that the idea of having random bottles of alcohol left on almost every city block has not changed lol.

We took a bit of a scenic route to Nyhavn, walking along one of the canals. We had perfect weather - about 25C but overcast - a nice change from the 28-32C and blazing sun we've had for the entire cruise. Not only was it overcast, but we got the breeze off the water too which made it perfect. Walking along the canal we found this cute little area where there were trampolines built into the sidewalk area - that was fun watching kids (and kids at heart) try them out. We did finally make it to Nyhavn to see the colourful buildings line both side of the street/canal.

We made out way back towards Norreport and went to have lunch at the market nearby (Torvehallerne). It's a beautiful area - two large buildings full of vendors and then a giant outdoor area between the two with more vendors and tons of room to sit. It made me think about how wasted an opportunity and space the Byward Market area is in Ottawa... something like this setup would be amazing back home. Anyway. Mom had this really elaborate grilled ham n' cheese sandwhich that literally took 10min to make; I on the other hand went to the super busy fish stall and got a massive fish cake (larger than a baseball), ryebread and "remoulade salad". The fish cake was superb..!! Definitely filled me up. I had no idea what the remoulade was... like it's a condiment, but the salad was like... cauliflower and something? I'm not quite sure what it was. It was ok, but pretty powerful as a flavour.

Getting back to the boat was a bit of an adventure... we found the bus stop we wanted (we hoped), but the bus didn't come when it was supposed to. This couple standing near us was also going though (I could see his keycard in his hand), so we figured we were in the right spot at least. Another nearby couple was starting to freak out about the bus / right spot - I told them the bus probably just is late, so it skips a run or what not, and sure enough, it finally got there. So many people were trying to push and cram into the front door - the driver yelled out that if we already had tickets to go in the back which was glorious of him to do - we beat the chaos. Back at the terminal we had to go through security again (UGHHHHHH I hate when you have to empty your actual water bottle) and that was that. I made sure to have all my favourites as part of my supper - their egg salad, crepe, orange tea - last night on the boat!

Sailing out of Copenhagen was really something to watch - the ship goes up and around, crossing at the super narrow point between Sweden and Denmark before looping and coming back down towards Germany. We seemed to be the first cruise ship that evening as you can see the other one right on our tail, and there was another one off in the horizon too. Add in all the cargo, ferries and smaller ships and it was certainly rush hour..! This poor little boat moved out of the way for our ships... but he didn't move quite far enough and had fun dealing with the waves after we passed. Woops.

Today we came back to Berlin via Rostock - through the ship we could transfer to the Rostock train station, so we did that. Mom just wanted to sit and not worry about dragging bags anywhere, so she people watched (and kept our bags) while I went to explore the Old Town a bit. We had ~2hrs to kill waiting for the bus and it took less than that for me to explore, so that worked out well. For her part, Mom got a lot of people trying to talk to her in German lol. She has mastered the shrug and super apologetic "sorry, English...?"

Rostock might not be very big, but it's really pretty - colourful old buildings, a lot of statues and fountains, etc. Like I said, I pretty much just walked around the Old Town and admired the buildings... I also popped into a few shops - I love checking out stationary and school-supply shops to see what kind of things they have and to see if there's anything unique that would be helpful back home. I got a few pens, but that's it. I also popped into a pharmacy to get a box of my Euro tum-like things that are way more effective than tums. (PS they really don't do pharmacies like we do - you have to go to a proper pharmacy-pharmacy to get just about anything here)

Bus ride to Berlin was... somewhat eventful. Our driver ran out of road twice on the highway (yes... you read that correctly) and then when we got to Berlin he took a wrong-turn, we stopped on the side of the road for like 10min before he did a u-turn. Fail. And then our taxi took a somewhat scenic route to our hotel... not scenic in a more expensive way, just he super criss-crossed the city rather than take a more direct route. By the time we got in it was ~4pm; I wanted to do some shopping in the city, so I headed off to do that while Mom stayed at the hotel.

Once I came back we decided to check-out if anything was on tv

Tomorrow we're off to Iceland 😊

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