Two cruises dodging storms on the Norwegian Star

Our trip to northern Europe started with our drive to Miami to catch our flight to Copenhagen, Denmark. We drove down from Georgia on 16 September to the Holiday Inn, Miami International Airport (438 miles in about 7 hours). The hotel was near the airport and offers a good rate that includes parking for our car. We were gone 34 days and saved a lot on parking fees. The hotel was newly renovated, as was our hotel room, which was spacious and nice for $122. The hotel staff was friendly and a waitress at the bar brought us some empanadas after we inquired if the restaurant was Cuban. Apparently, it doesn’t have a Cuban theme anymore, but empanadas were found downstairs. They were excellent. We had a light dinner later that was very good. This hotel is a great place to park and fly or cruise, if you want to leave your car while on a trip. One thing, don’t do the breakfast buffet, order off the menu.

The free hotel shuttle took us to airport. We used miles on US Airways, so we had three flights to get to Copenhagen. From Miami we flew to Charlotte, where I used our free US Airways club coupon to relax and snack in their nice clubhouse. Then on to Frankfurt, Germany for a change to planes on SAS to Copenhagen. We only had 1.5 hours to change planes, but our flight arrived early in Frankfurt. Customs was very quick and we took the train to another terminal and arrived in plenty of time for our SAS flight. We arrived in Copenhagen on 18 September about 2 PM, found the free hotel shuttle to the Crowne Plaza Copenhagen Towers. There was an ATM machine in the luggage carousel area where I purchased some Danish Krone. I later had a problem using my ATM card to buy Krone. I used the card successfully in Norway and on the ship, but twice it would not work at bank ATMs in Copenhagen. I did find out that when using my visa credit card to tell the cashier it was signature not pin. Read more