Hamburg and first day at Sea - July 27 & 28, 2018

To make a long, stressful story a bit brief, we sat there on that veranda trying to relax and calculating our next steps. By 11 am Stan's luggage still had not been delivered. We sat patiently waiting and tried not to think about the fact that we were wasting a perfectly good vacation day. Plus, remember, the hotel had no air conditioning so as the morning turned into afternoon, that beautiful pleasant day began to get hot! The staff at the hotel knew our situation; I think they felt sorry for us and helped us make local phone calls to the airport, to Turkish Airlines and to the cruise line seeking help or advice. The hotel staff' support was absolutely critical. Just like home, calls to large companies are usually answered first by an automated IVR system but we are in Germany. The recorded system is German. The hotel team made numerous calls for us getting us through the first German communication phase and on to English-speaking representatives. About noon we receive a call from the baggage handler company. The man said they had the bag in hand and were delivering it to the hotel. They promised a 30-minute delivery interval. At 2 pm we began to get seriously concerned. With the hotel's help, we got in touch with some "can-do" people at the cruise line. They told us to forget the luggage and just get ourselves in route to the cruise terminal immediately. Check-in was scheduled to close at 3 pm. They told us they would help find the luggage and try to press for its delivery to the ship before it departed. Otherwise it would be sent to our first port two days later. At this point, we were saying to heck with the bag, just let us get on the ship!!! We got a taxi and headed out.

Almost at the ship, sure enough we received a phone call from the baggage handler called saying they were at the hotel with the bag but would re-route it to the cruise ship. Grrrrr! Stan and I both were trying to stay calm. As we rode in the taxi, we hardly spoke but our adrenalin was pumping. Finally we just started laughing!!! Even though we were about ten minutes late, we checked in fine. We've cruised so often that we get priority check-in service. Amazingly though, in the line for less-frequent cruisers, there were probably 200 people still waiting to go through the check-in procedures.

Guest relations assured us that if the baggage did not arrive by the time of sailing, it would be forwarded to our first port, Bergen two days later. In addition they have emergency kits they gladly furnished that contain t-shirts and toiletries and they would do our laundry for free. How nice!

Guess what was waiting at our door when we returned from dinner that evening!

We stopped by the Guest Relations desk the next morning to thank the team for their help in getting the bag to us successfully. You know Stan, of course, after we thanked the lady profusely, Stan said, but can I still have the t-shirt kit? The lady just smiled like . . . you know better than that.

Guess what was in our cabin the next day? T-shirts!!! No wonder we love Norwegian Cruise Lines!

After such an exciting day on July 27, our first full day at sea was a wash. We still suffered jet-lag and our bodies and brains were sore from the flush of adrenalin. We slept late, went to the gym, attended to a lecture on things we might do at some of the upcoming ports and played a little Bingo. At the bar we met a couple we really like from South Africa and another from San Jose. We watched a performance of ship's entertainment team and enjoyed a lovely dinner of lamb chops. By ten pm, enough was enough! Our bodies and brains had had it!