Well, as usual, all good things have to come to an end. We left the ship at 0600 (yes, six o’clock in the morning!!) to catch the transfer coach to Amsterdam airport. The rain had stopped and it was 13C (56F).
We’re now sitting in the lounge with a 3 hour wait for the flight tp Copenhagen, then on to Toronto and Ottawa. There is one luxury in the lounge that we have been missing for the last couple of weeks, fast and reliable WiFi!!! I know, first world problem.
We enjoyed the cruise, despite having to change ships half way through. In fact the transfer was pretty much seamless to us. The cases had to be packed and unpacked again, but I helped Lyn with that…… by staying well out of her way.
With only 160 or so passengers on board it was easy to get to know lot of people.
Organisation, both on board and on excursions was fantastic, of course we always had stragglers who couldn’t read a watch and turned up past the all-aboard time, but that’s not the fault of the cruise line (other than the fact they didn’t leave them behind!).
Food on board was very good, almost too fancy for us on Scenic. Although we had a gifted drinks package on Emerald and an open bar on Scenic, I doubt whether we got close to drinking enough to cover the price of the package, getting old sucks!
The cabins, particularly Emerald, were more than adequate. In fact we were surprised at the amount of room we had.
At the end of the cruise we felt that 12 days rather than 14 may have been better, but could well have been due to the fact that the last 2 stops, Cologne and Amsterdam, were not as interesting as all the previous ones.
Would we take another river cruise? Yes, if we found the right destinations, bur we would happily stick with Emerald as the cruise line of choice.
On a personal note, thanks to Dave and Karen for putting up with us! We met up with Dave and Karen (a NZ couple) at the hotel prior to boarding the ship. Scarily for Lyn and Karen, Dave and I had the same warped sense of humour that drives them both mad. They may have suffered a little when we all got together. NZ got through to the rugby final last night, England plays tonight against S. Africa for the other spot. Hopefully we get a NZ – England final (Sorry Robert!).
That’s it for this trip, the next one will be Machu Picchu and a cruise around South America in mid February.
Well, not quite the end! We knew we had a tight, but legal connection in Copenhagen, but we were 30 minutes late in leaving Amsterdam. After speed walking from one end of the airport to the other we arrived at the gate with the plane still there. Unfortunately the flight had closed! We now walked back to the Scandinavian Airlines transfer desk as Air Canada had shut up shop for the day! Scandinavian were very helpful and efficient and soon had us on a new flight 3 hours later. A slightly more circuitous route, Copenhagen, Chicago, Toronto Ottawa, but at least it gets us home. As I had a couple of hours to spare in Copenhagen I filed the 600 Euro ($900), each claim against Air Canada for a delayed flight!
US Readers ignore this paragraph!
Well, not quite the end of the end. I had forgotten how asinine it is to transfer US airports. Almost anywhere in the world where you transit through multiple countries you can do so with out having to officially enter that country, i.e. you remain “airside” and not have to go through immigration and passport control. Not the US, not only do you have to enter via passport control, you have to collect your checked luggage, take it through customs and then recheck it back to destination!! All this activity is overseen by the most disgruntled and power mad TSA agents you can imagine. All I can think of is that this process is designed to reduce unemployment.
US Readers Continue
After our reroute we were told our bags would be on the same flights as us. Wrong. Air Canada in their infinite wisdom decided to reroute our bags to the next Air Canada flight to Toronto! We may see our bags Monday