10-Night France, Iceland, and Norway Cruise - Day 17 Copenhagen to Austin and Final Thoughts

Copenhagen to Austin

We woke up at 3:15 AM to be out the door by 3:45 AM to make it to the airport at least two hours early for our 7:25 AM flight. Yay. While I was finishing up the last of the packing, Roger said that we had an email from British Airways. Our flight was delayed by two hours. We all piled back into bed with our clothes on and set an alarm for two hours later. 

We woke up (again) at 5:45 and hauled our stuff to the train station. There was a 6:27 train to the airport so that worked out really well. We were at the airport by 6:50 but the checkin wasn’t open and things were confusing because they had us stand in a line to “rebook” us and I kept telling them we didn’t need to rebook and I finally heard them letting other people check in for our flight and I asked why we couldn’t and she said, “well, we need to rebook you because you’ll miss your connection.” I explained that, no, we wouldn’t, as our connection wasn’t until 11:45 AM so then she finally let us check in and go to the gate to sit down and eat something.

The flight from Copenhagen was uneventful (other than being 2 hours late). When we got to Heathrow it was a complete zoo and we had to show our passports and boarding passes at various times to about 80 different people. We didn’t have to reclaim luggage or go through any official passport control but we did have to go back through security, which was weird. We had a lot less time than we had anticipated which was good and bad. I had hoped we could sit down and eat something, but we really couldn’t so we just picked up some sandwiches at a shop. 

Then just a 9.5 hour flight home! The flight home felt like it took FOREVER. I alternated between working my trip report, watching Ted Lasso, and working on my BODYCOMBAT choreography and scripting. When we got to Austin, they told us there was a problem with the luggage on the flight and only about 2/3 of the luggage had made it onboard from Heathrow. They had a giant list about 5 pages long of people who had missing luggage. We were, thankfully, not on the list.

By the time we got in the front door we had been up for almost 24 hours and it took us a few days to finally get back sorted out on the right time zone, but it was all definitely worth it and a fantastic trip all around. 

Final Thoughts

We are all in agreement that our favorite day overall was in Reykjavik. The weather, scenery, and activities all just worked out really well for a great day of sightseeing. Iceland was incredible overall and definitely the highlight of the trip. I think the trip overall was a really nice mix of beautiful nature, history, and activities. I’ve talked in the past about having “old building burnout” but we didn’t experience that until that very last day in Copenhagen and I think having the other parts of the trip be more about nature and scenery really helped with that (vs. the Mediterranean cruise in which that happened more quickly). 

I was really worried about the number of sea days on this cruise, but in the end, I really don’t feel like it was an issue. It was actually really nice having a day at sea in between each of our port days to keep things from feeling overly full and intensive. Some of the sea days were better than others, for sure and I feel like all the really interesting activities, for the most part, occurred on one really jam-packed sea day. I don’t know if that was our interests in particular or if somehow that sea day was just extra packed for everyone, but we had that perception. 

We had a really great cruise group for this one with lots of really wonderful people. Emmaline made some incredible friends. I feel like this is the first time she’s really had a close group that she made friends with and wanted to be with them from the start. We’ve come a long way from her being glued to our sides on earlier cruises and not wanting to do anything without us.

If I had it to do over again, there isn’t much I would have changed. I would have been better at vetting the restaurants in Copenhagen. We had some really mixed bags there and some were too pricey for what we got. And I probably would have just dealt with the extra money and booked that junior suite at the hotel. I had a really hard time telling the difference in room types on the hotel website but I think it was about $50/night more, which is a little more than my usual budget, but I think we would have slept better and been more comfortable. That said, the hotel location was fantastic being about five minutes from the central train station.

I hope that we can go back to Iceland some day. Maybe for just a land trip. We didn't have enough time there. And we knew that. That's one thing we do like about cruising. We can sample different places and see how we like them. And if we like them, we can perhaps try to return for a longer visit some day.