September 13th, 2008: Crusing back to Copenhagen, Denmark
Bob: I was tired after four solid days of go, go, go, and consequently I was happy to have an "at sea" day to rest up for our return to Copenhagen. I spent much of the morning catching up with my journal, but took breaks to have some fun with the arts and crafts classes that were offered on board. In a morning class we given little cardboard jewelry cases that we could paint any way we liked. Since I had an oval box, I painted mine to mimic the shape of a ship. |
Monika: Today we finally got to rest up since it was a sea day. I woke up around 6:30 and started thinking about how to pack. Since I could not get back to sleep, I got up quietly and started typing to bring the journal up to date. After Bob got up we had breakfast. This was an overcast day, so we did not feel the urge to get up on deck. We went to the disembarkation lecture and then to an arts and crafts class that let us paint little boxes. Bob painted his as a rather pretty Costa ship with the top being the distinct yellow smokestack. I painted mine in pretty colors with "Costa Mediterranea" written on the side. I hoped we could get them home safely as they were rather fragile and hard to pack. After lunch we rested, wrote, and downloaded pictures. |
Bob: In the afternoon craft session we were given T-shirts to paint together with some patterns to choose from. I chose a large sun to paint at the top of my T-shirt and then drew in a cruise ship underneath it and painted that. Since we were on a Costa ship and they had given us the T-shirts, I felt it was only fair to paint the ship's funnel yellow with a big blue "C" on it, which is the identifying characteristic of all the Costa ships. |
Monika: After lunch I walked around while Bob rested. The casino, one of my normal stops, frustrated me. They would not take dollar bills or Euro coins. The smallest Euro bill is 5 Euros, and I'll be danged if I gamble that much. I would rather use it for a glass of beer with my lunch! Lunch was fresh made spaghetti with a very light tomato sauce. Yummie. I also checked the stores one more time, but there were no new bargains to be had. Which is a good thing, since packing was already getting a little dicey. But first we did accumulated something else. |
Bob: Once we finished our T-shirts, we returned to our cabin for the necessary but always rather sad task of packing for departure. We had slowly but steadily accumulated tourist knicknacks as our trip progressed and that, of course, made the repacking much more difficult. From our arts and craft sessions we had the two masquerade masks, two jewelry boxes and two painted T-shirts, and from the ship's end-of-the-season sale in the onboard shops we accumulated two Viking ship T-shirts, a couple of mugs with a Viking motif and a couple of Russian pens that turned out not to work but were kept for the pictures of the Hermitage on them. Working in our favor, however, was the fact that we were also slowly consuming some of the food and books we had brought along for the journey. If we really like the books we with, then we take the trouble to carry them back home with us, but if they are just so-so we usually donate them to the ship's library and that gives us a bit more space. By virtue of using a small extra backpack we had bought with, we finally did manage to pack it all away before it was time for dinner. |
Monika: The last arts and craft was T-shirt painting. We each got a white T-shirt and could pick a pattern that we then stenciled onto the T-shirt and then we started painting. Bob chose a sun and drew free hand a Costa ship underneath. Very beautiful. I picked a sickle of a moon with stars around. On the back of the shirt a painted the name of the ship and the dates of the cruise (Costa Mediterranea, September 7-14, 2008). What a blast. We were the last to get finished but enjoyed every minute of the time. Back up in the cabin we started packing. With the dirty clothes in a small backpack that we had brought along, there was no problem. But the problem will come when we finally pack for our last airplane trip back home: that backpack will have to be folded up and the clothes redistributed somehow since we don't want to pay extra for a second piece of luggage. American airlines are so much fun! The evening show was a crew show and very entertaining. At the end they brought out all the kids with T-shirts and signs they had painted during the kids activities time. |
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