We’re back in Europe for the first time in two years! That’s a crazy long break for us, but we opted to finish the 50 states last year with our visit to Hawaii and our epic road trip through the Mountain West and Great Plains. Honestly, we enjoyed that so much I can’t say that I really missed going overseas, but it’s nevertheless nice to be back now.
Our flights were on time and (relatively) uneventful. I say “relatively” because we initially had some difficulty in Tampa. We inherited a broken airplane from an earlier Cincinnati flight, but it was fixed in a surprisingly timely manner (especially as we were watching a couple of guys repair the rear stabilizer on the tail from a lift) and wouldn’t have mattered anyway since I got us confirmed seats on the next flight to Atlanta an hour later.
The transatlantic flight was pleasant enough in Economy Comfort. We arrived in London a little late due to holding for air traffic over England for 30 minutes. For our onward journey to Copenhagen, we managed to get through the arrivals process, change terminals, and checked in with British Airways in about an hour and a half. We wasted a couple of hours at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 (which feels more like a high end mall than an airplane terminal) and flew on to Copenhagen.
On arrival in Copenhagen, we took a taxi into the city center (about $45) to our hotel, The Square. Although, I’m usually a Marriott guy, it had a better location across the street from the city hall and about a block from Tivoli Gardens. The hotel itself was typically European of a Scandinavian persuasion–fairly modern design in the lobby, functional but small (by American standards) rooms.
As we only made it to the hotel around 6:30pm, we headed out for dinner after checking into the hotel. Having wandered about the city center for a bit, we settled upon the “Cock’s and Cow” (a name that seems dirty and ungrammatical, though more likely just lost in translation). It’s a sort of high-end, independent burger and chicken joint, which we thought would appeal to Emerson. The food–salads, burgers, and fries–were all pretty good (great for Europe) and not wildly expensive for Scandinavia (about $70 for the four of us). After dinner, we walked around the city a bit more and took Emerson past Tivoli (which she’s excited now to visit, not remembering her first visit at 16 months of age).
Note: I’ve been trying to troubleshoot an inability to upload pictures to the blog. Unfortunately, the problem (which seems to involve file permissions on my web server) isn’t likely easily fixed while traveling, especially since I left my laptop at home. So, a thousand words might have to be worth a picture until we get home. 😬