All Aboard!

On Saturday night, in Copenhagen, we met up with our friends, John and Becca, for dinner. We went back to the same place that Brock and I had been for dinner the previous night. However, it was evident that a different chef was working that night. Besides our food not being quite as good, our poor young waiter was overwhelmed. Dinner took a long time.

Brock and I had such an amazing experience with Switzerland's hotels, dining, and impeccable service. We thought it would be like that everywhere in Europe, and it's not!

Yesterday (Sunday) we woke up in Copenhagen and went for a run/walk in a nice park near our hotel and the castle. It was a beautiful, warm sunny day and we were enjoying being outside.

After a good breakfast, we checked out and were charged for our 2 days of breakfasts, and it came to $190! It was good, but not THAT good! That left a bad taste in our mouths for Copenhagen.

After checking out, we caught a cab with John and Becca to the cruise ship. We are sailing on Royal Caribbean's "Serenade of the Seas". This is a Dave Koz cruise; Dave Koz is a famous jazz saxophonist who hosts the "Dave Koz Lounge" on the Watercolors XM channel on Sundays. He obviously has good connections, judging by the level of talent he hired to perform on the ship!

Here are some images of the ship:

Here are some photos of our friends, John and Becca, who are on their honeymoon:

On the pool deck, Dave introduced all of the musicians who will be playing for us this week. I would guess there are about 75 different musicians. There is a big 2-hour show in the theatre every night, and countless other venues around the ship where the musicians are performing at all times of day.

As we set sail, Dave offered a toast to all the passengers:

Becca and I got to meet the saxophonist Mindi Adair, and we got her autograph:

Here is a lovely photo of Becca on the ship:

We got together with John and Becca for a sit-down dinner, followed by the concert from 9:30 - 11:30 p.m. Yes! We will not be getting much sleep on this cruise.

The 9:30 pm. concert on Sunday night featured saxophonist Michael Lington (from Denmark) and guitarist and vocalist Jonathan Butler (from South Africa). It was great!

Brock was still missing one bag by the end of the evening, and we feared the worst. To make matters worse, the cruise ship staff confiscated his Maker's Mark Bourbon bottle that he had stuck in his other piece of luggage. If you want to get on Brock's bad side, you take away his Maker's Mark! He was irate and grumpy. However, much to our surprise, the missing bag was waiting outside our door when we opened it this morning. He's quickly losing his reasons to be grumpy!

On Monday, we were at sea all day. We managed to sleep in, have breakfast, get a bunch of musicians' autographs on our poster, work out at the fitness center, then take in a few other small concerts before the 9:30 evening concert. Tonight's concert features vocalist Kenny Lattimore.

The "Serenade of the Seas"is a very nice boat, the bed is comfortable, the A/C works in our room (which we can't say was true of our room in Copenhagen), the food is good and of course the entertainment is stellar!

Tomorrow we will be in Stockholm, Sweden, taking a tour.