Friday, August 7, 2026
On the Baltic Sea/Aboard
Sapphire Princess
Baltic Sea—the Øresund
Strait, 2.5 miles wide, between Sweden and Denmark
64 F and cloudy
Clarion Suites-Airport
After ten hours of sleep, I was awake before
TK. We met our Uber driver to take us to
the port—he drove through Copenhagen, so we had a little taste of the
city. It is not like the Mediterranean cities
I am used to. We saw single family homes, garages, no red clay roofs, and there
were large apartment buildings in this city with a population of almost 700,000
people.
Department store in downtown Copenhagen
Downtown Copenhagen
I take such great photos from an Uber
TK spotted our ship before I did. The port
traffic was light, and the terminal was not crowded. It did not take long to
board the ship—TK does so much preplanning: our stateroom, dining room, soda package,
Internet package, all set up before we even get on the ship. Lucky girl I am.
Sapphire Princess Stats:
Grand Class
Built in Nagasaki, Japan by Mitsubishi
Heavy Industries in 2004/$400 million
951 ft. in length—121 ft. beam—17 decks
1337 staterooms—1100 crew---2670 passengers
Stateroom D317-Deck 9
This might be the largest
stateroom we have ever had!
Our luggage is unpacked, we explored some
of the ship, and we had dinner. We like
a table for two, separate —not a “bank” of tables for two. Fortunately we have
what we want! For dessert we had sticky toffee
pudding for our Scottish Cruise Friend Mike.
Sticky Toffee Pudding
(not quite as good as Edinburgh)
As we departed Copenhagen while dining, we
heard the Captain mention that we would pass by Kronborg Castle—the setting
for Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, and the most powerful and important castle
in Scandinavia! The current castle was
finished in 1585 and is located at the narrowest point of the Strait of Øresund.
Kronborg Castle
(Elsinore in Hamlet--Elsinore is the English version of the
name Helsingor, the city the castle is in)
Our state room is on the
port side, so we watched Denmark float by after dinner—if we were on the starboard
side, we would have seen Sweden! This
point is the entrance to the Baltic Sea making it a strategically very
important location.
The region that is today southern Sweden
(Scania) has belonged to Denmark for most of history. The Danish king,
therefore, also had a powerful fortress on the other side and controlled the
passage in and out of the Baltic Sea. The king collected taxes from all the
trade ships passing by. At times, these taxes financed more than a third of the
expenses of Denmark. Interesting!
I watched as we sailed for an hour and may
have seen the castle. Hamlet was one of
my favorite Shakespeare plays—I hope my students liked it as much as I did!
TK’s Takes: Passing through Copenhagen he
remarked about so many bicycles without locks outside homes and even in the
city near sidewalks and stores. We realize some were for rent, but not all of
them. Traffic was light.
He liked boarding the ship so easily, but
this was the first time we ever put our own luggage on a conveyor belt to the ship.
We were in our room by 1 p.m. The ship
is smaller than most we have been on and it has a library!
Our dining room servers are both from
Thailand—we mentioned that our daughter in law’s brother is in his 2nd
year of teaching in Thailand!
Clarion Hotel Lobby
I liked the lighting
