Granny's 2009 BALTIC CRUISE

[GrannyLorr]

In just a few hours we will be leaving home to start our next “adventure”. As the internet is so expensive on the ship, I decided to set up this thread before I left, anyway who know what can happen to Granny as she gets from one side of the World to the other! I am not expecting our trip to The Pride to be quite as exciting this time, after all, a car to the airport and a couple of flights just doesn’t compare to a stay in LA and a cross country Amtrak trip! However we do have to survive the “Gateway Road” (Brisbane’s answer to the one to Heathrow) so I have booked our car for 5 HOURS prior to our flight! I have done the same for when we leave London. If there happens to be any grid lock (perfectly normal for this road) I can ask the driver to get us to the nearest train station and reach the airport that way!
Packing for this trip has been ~fun~, a 7 week trip, but I think I have finally managed to squash enough “stuff” into our bags. Somehow I have managed to pack about 3 times more “stuff” for me, than I have for John?? We are underweight for the main part of our trip, just the London to Copenhagen flight may cause a bit of a problem. At least I will be able to do lots of shopping to fill those “underweight” bags for the return flights!

[cornyship]

'will be leaving home to start our next “adventure”. How long are you staying on board this time? 12 or 56 days? Love to hear about your adventures.
Cornelia

[cands]

Travel safely Lorraine. I'm looking forward to reading all about it.

Cheers,
Steve.

[GrannyLorr]

Originally Posted by cornyship

'will be leaving home to start our next “adventure”. How long are you staying on board this time? 12 or 56 days? Love to hear about your adventures.
Cornelia

Only 26 days this time Cornelia, but then staying in London for a couple of weeks.

[jagi]

Bon Voyage!
I'll be looking for your posts.
Judith

[PeaSea8ch]

I too will be looking forward to your travelogue!! Since you packed twice as much for yourself than John, during your 2 weeks in London he can have a couple of bespoke tuxedos and a few suits custom tailored for both beginning and end of long cruises. If you can, please post a few photos during your adventure.

Have a fantastic time with blue skies, calm seas and gentle breezes.

[Paminflorida]

Grannylorr, we'll see you on board - we leave on Friday!

[LN50]

have a good trip Looking forward to reading all about it.

[edwardw]

Have a great trip. See you on board on sept 10th.

ED

[marazul]

Great! we were feeling deprived of Granny's travelogues!
Looking forward to your trip. (Just don't get arrested this time. . .)

[Seabourn-nail]

Have a wonderful cruise Lorraine and John!
Though I've done this cruise a couple of times, you will probably write about it as if it is brand new to me!
Marja

[GrannyLorr]

Well the first part of our trip is over, and we have just done a 100km marathon through Dubai Airport to try and find our next Gate!

Our Driver arrived slightly early yesterday, but that was fine as we had been ready to leave for ages. I am usually all for “equality” but when the driver turned out to be a lady, all of a sudden I became sexist and wanted a big burly bloke to lift our luggage in and out of the car. For probably the first time in recent history, there were no hold ups, accidents or grid locks on our Airport road, so we arrived earlier than expected.
This was only our second flight with Emirates, and they have a lovely new lounge at Brisbane Airport, great food, friendly staff and wonderful French champagne (have to start getting in the mood) The best part of the new Lounge is that it has a direct Gate to the plane and we only had to board 10 minutes before departure. So began our almost 15 hour flight. Wasn’t too bad as long flights go….think I managed a couple of hours sleep, the rest of the time was spent trying to work out how to use the Entertainment system….I am never very good at those things, think I just about got it figured out around the time the announcement said to get ready for landing!
Dubai looked beautiful from the air, all lit up (about 4.30am)
Wasn’t quite so impressed when the plane didn’t pull up to one of those air bridge thingys…..and I looked down at a very steep lot of steps….. carrying all my heavy cabin bag, camera and computer bag, I could just see old Granny making a spectacular landing into Dubai! Seems the bloke behind me had the same thoughts, as he offered to carry my bags for me! Halfway down the stairs he asked if the bag he was carrying had all my money in it, as he was about to do a runner! Nah…..just a silly old Aussie making a joke…..John had the money anyway.
I noticed we arrived at Gate 4 and we needed Gate 230!! So our marathon began……on a bus thing first…then miles along corridors following arrows…then down an elevator…then up an elevator, back to where we started! Finally found the gate, but then wanted the Lounge…so off we went again……wont be able to stay here too long as it will take about 30 minutes to walk back to Gate 230!

So here we are now relaxing in the Lounge, and there has just been an announcement that our flight to London has been delayed “due to technical problems”….just the sort of thing you want to hear before you get on a plane! Especially as this plane is the new A380 and they probably don’t even know what problems they can have yet!! PeaSea8ch, feel free to give me your expert advice to put my mind at ease!

[PeaSea8ch]

Originally Posted by GrannyLorr

PeaSea8ch, feel free to give me your expert advice to put my mind at ease!

Granny,

Your A380 is too new to be having "technical problems" and your airline will be watching them very closely to see how they perform. My experience with these vague announcements is that it is usually something minor or trivial that the airline is embarrased to admit to but requires time to fix. Once aloft, a steady stream of Champagne will have you both in fine form when you arrive in Jolly Ole London.

["Wandering Wino's"]

Originally Posted by GrannyLorr

Well the first part of our trip is over, and we have just done a 100km marathon through Dubai Airport to try and find our next Gate!

Our Driver arrived slightly early yesterday, but that was fine as we had been ready to leave for ages. I am usually all for “equality” but when the driver turned out to be a lady, all of a sudden I became sexist and wanted a big burly bloke to lift our luggage in and out of the car. For probably the first time in recent history, there were no hold ups, accidents or grid locks on our Airport road, so we arrived earlier than expected.
This was only our second flight with Emirates, and they have a lovely new lounge at Brisbane Airport, great food, friendly staff and wonderful French champagne (have to start getting in the mood) The best part of the new Lounge is that it has a direct Gate to the plane and we only had to board 10 minutes before departure. So began our almost 15 hour flight. Wasn’t too bad as long flights go….think I managed a couple of hours sleep, the rest of the time was spent trying to work out how to use the Entertainment system….I am never very good at those things, think I just about got it figured out around the time the announcement said to get ready for landing!
Dubai looked beautiful from the air, all lit up (about 4.30am)
Wasn’t quite so impressed when the plane didn’t pull up to one of those air bridge thingys…..and I looked down at a very steep lot of steps….. carrying all my heavy cabin bag, camera and computer bag, I could just see old Granny making a spectacular landing into Dubai! Seems the bloke behind me had the same thoughts, as he offered to carry my bags for me! Halfway down the stairs he asked if the bag he was carrying had all my money in it, as he was about to do a runner! Nah…..just a silly old Aussie making a joke…..John had the money anyway.
I noticed we arrived at Gate 4 and we needed Gate 230!! So our marathon began……on a bus thing first…then miles along corridors following arrows…then down an elevator…then up an elevator, back to where we started! Finally found the gate, but then wanted the Lounge…so off we went again……wont be able to stay here too long as it will take about 30 minutes to walk back to Gate 230!

So here we are now relaxing in the Lounge, and there has just been an announcement that our flight to London has been delayed “due to technical problems”….just the sort of thing you want to hear before you get on a plane! Especially as this plane is the new A380 and they probably don’t even know what problems they can have yet!! PeaSea8ch, feel free to give me your expert advice to put my mind at ease!

My DH was lucky enough to do one of the test flights on this plane and not speaking officially he said it was a marvelous aircraft.

[tayl]

Yippeeee Granny Lorr is on the move again.
I so enjoy reading your stories and adventures!

[T&T Vikings]

What!
No news from GrannyLorr?
I hope you are not arrested?
Welcome to Copenhagen, Denmark.
T&T

[GrannyLorr]

For some strange reason I wasnt able to get into CC this morning, so the following was what I wrote before we went out sight seeing!

Werent all Trip Reports going to be made "Stickys"?



We arrived safe and sound in Copenhagen, after about 36 hours of traveling! Just had a reasonable night’s sleep and a great breakfast are almost raring to go again!

Paul, you were right, the “technical problems” with the A380 weren’t really very technical at all! When I hear "technical problems", I imagine, wings falling off, flat tyres, holes in the fuel tank.....nah, they were just waiting on a connecting flight which had 80 London bound passengers on it! The delay was only about 30 minutes. Looking at the A380 through the glass of the Departure Lounge, we were surprised that it didn’t look anywhere near as big as we had been expecting. The Lounge was very crowded, so my next question is ….how many passengers do these things usually take?

Our seats were on the upper deck, so poor old Granny had to struggle up a flight of stairs dragging her bags behind her. The staircase is rather an improvement on the old 747’s! We had to walk through the First Class section, and I felt pangs of jealousy…wow…..maybe “one day”. Business Class was pretty special too. Only 4 seats or “pods” across, loads of space for all your “stuff” The entire top deck was First and Business Class. Looking at the width and breadth of the deck soon made you realize just how huge these things are. I am not sure about First class but I don’t think there was an empty seat in Business Class. Maybe on our return flight we will get to travel in the lower deck so I can compare! We were very impressed with Emirates, the food was very good….for airline food……we seemed to eat a lot of huge prawns (shrimps) and I stuck mostly with the fish…Red Emperor and Sea Bass…which was fresh and cooked well.
Finally arrived in London and it was off to find our luggage……must say after all the reports recently about missing luggage it was rather a relief to see our BIG FRANGIPANIS (stickers on our luggage) come around the corner of the carousel! Then off through Immigration, Passport Control, everything was very hassle free. Heathrow has had a lot of bad Press, but we didn’t find any problems at all. The next part had me a wee bit nervous…checking into Coach with SAS with luggage way over the limits. Our checked luggage was about 3.5 kilos each overweight and our cabin bags about 2 kilos over…….we were expecting at least $200 excess baggage…..the lovely man at the SAS Check in Counter didn’t say a word about the checked luggage and didn’t weigh the cabin bags……Granny had a win at last!
As we were only flying Coach for this section we didn’t have a Lounge to go to, so drank lots of coffee in the coffee shop that had the most comfortable looking seats!
The flight to Copenhagen was only about 1.5 hours and once again our luggage arrived safely! So far all is good!
We are staying at the Scandic Palace Hotel, and I have read a few mixed reviews about it, that always makes you wonder just what you are going to be getting! I know the hotel was renovated recently, and although I am not a fan of "modern" Scandinavian décor, our room is “very new” lovely comfortable bed, and we have a small balcony overlooking a back street lined with Bars and cafes etc. We also have “free” wifi and “free” breakfast…so we are happy campers!

Now a question for T & T Vikings….was there a football game or something in Copenhagen on Wednesday night? The cafes below us were full of young people, yelling, chanting, and blowing whistles!! Of course our Danish is not quite fluent yet….actually I don’t think we have picked up a single word …so have no idea what was being said in the chanting………or is this just the “normal” social scene here? All I can say is thank goodness for double glazed windows and ear plugs!
Well must be time to go out and do some “Tourist” stuff…….

[T&T Vikings]

Granny,
Glad to now you finaly made it, without brooken legs etc.
Yes a lot is going on its after all a lively city, thank goodness I am lucky since I live in an area north and in comfertable distance from noise of the city.
Note. everybody in Scandinavia is having problems with the CC connections from 0830 am to 1300 Local time.
T&T

[GrannyLorr]

Paul asked for some photos, and at the moment I have really fast internet so can oblige....dont think I will be able to keep up with Steve and Chris though as the net is always too slow on the ship for uploading....must have almost cost Cands the price of another cruise!

First pics are of our hotel the Scandic Palace, and also the view from our balcony over the rooftops of Copenhagen.

[marazul]

Originally Posted by GrannyLorr

Werent all Trip Reports going to be made "Stickys"?

Only if they are as much fun as yours!