Day 9 – The Final Day in Copenhagen

CONT’D ...Until we were awoken by a shrieking fire alarm at 2:45AM. I shot out of bed in a stupor and asked, “Is that something I did?” in my confusion. Then the alarm stopped. There was complete silence for a time. Then it started again for a couple of seconds. Stopped again. Then another brief alarm. By this point our adrenaline had spiked hard, so we got dressed, grabbed our most valuable items (passports, phones, wallets, etc), and head to the ground level. We had to take the stairs, but thankfully we were only on the 3rd floor, which would be the fourth floor in the States.

We ambled out to the hotel patio and walked into a mass of people gathering there. The Copenhagen fire department had already arrived and sent in their firefighters to investigate. We stood outside for a time, waiting to hear if we’d be allowed back in the building. We didn’t see any smoke or obvious flames from our vantage point. More and more people trickled out of the hotel. Eventually, and rather unceremoniously, the staff said that we could return to our rooms. Many people immediately swarmed the staff to ask what had happened. The only answer given was “False Alarm”. Interesting.

A lovely impromptu 3AM gathering.

We were wide awake at this point, so Shay googled “Cabinn Copenhagen Fire Alarm”. We were surprised to learn that this was a somewhat common occurrence at this particular hotel. Random, inexplicable fire alarms in the middle of the night. This has been happening since at least 2015. I suppose they might as well list that as an amenity at this point.

After the adrenaline had worn off, we were all able to fall back asleep. I slept soundly after the apprehension of additional alarms had lifted.

Later that morning we awoke and got our things together. We’d be checking out shortly. We had been blessed with beautiful weather everywhere we went so far, but our luck couldn’t hold out forever. Copenhagen’s weather resumed being Copenhagen weather and a heavy, soaking rain was on the forecast for the entire day. We checked out of the hotel and headed towards the nearest public transportation. We were going to head in the direction of our ferry (read as Cruise Ship if you are American) and grab some breakfast somewhere. We happened on a small cafe restaurant called “Katz”. We shook off the rain from our rain coats and headed in to be seated. It was a cozy little place and welcome shelter from the rain.

Shay, Madi, and Derek took advantage of a lovely pick-4 brunch plate. There was a decent variety of options to choose from, and all of them sounded delicious. Everyone made there selections, and then it was my turn. I decided to go with a club sandwich. However, at least in this restaurant, it’s not like an American club sandwich. Instead it was pan fried chicken, bacon, mixed greens, and a curry aioli. While we waited, we enjoyed come coffee.

The food arrived and as we’ve come to expect being over on this side of the world, it was delicious. We’ve been very fortunate so far, I can’t think of a single food outing that disappointed completely. Maybe we’re just easy to please!

After brunch, we decided to make our way to the Ferry terminal to sit and get out of the rain. We were quite pleased to discover that we could actually board the ferry quite earlier than we expected, although our quarters wouldn’t be ready for some time. Fortunately for us, luck was on our side, because we found a very comfortable booth among all the completely occupied seating.

Eventually our quarters were ready, and we unloaded our soaked gear. Now we just had to kill some time until dinner. We sat in our room and chatted about our journey so far, what we expected, what we got, all that sort of thing. Conversation in the company of friends always seems to make the time fly by, before we knew it, it was time to make our dinner reservation at an onboard steakhouse.

We were seated, made our menu selections, and declined the water, because they charged for it. Don’t worry though, they had a small sign on the tables explaining that it was totally worth the $5 a person to get a glass of water because it was really good water. We were also visited by a magician, and I must say, it was perhaps the most underwhelming magic show of all time. There was a dice in a cup. We rolled it. We looked at the number. He guessed it. End of show.

Our food arrived and it was fine. Shay, Derek, and I got a steak and Shay and I had a baked potato with butter (you had to choose either butter or sour cream, not both). The potato was roughly 3 times the size of the steak. The steaks were also being hot-held, so they ended up being slightly dry and stringy, even after ordering it medium-rare. I also got a Baked Alaska for dessert, which was pretty tasty! The meringue could have been stiffer and torched crispier, but it was passable for a dessert on a boat.

Madi got a plate of chicken with fries. The chicken, too, was a bit on the underwhelming side. She also had a fudge cake with black currant sorbet. This was actually pretty good!

Feeling whelmed by our food, we head back to our cabin to hit the hay. When we woke up, we’d be in Norway, eager to begin the last leg of our tour.

Farewell Copenhagen!