Going to Denmark

It’s been three years since we have traveled overseas. The last trip was to Iceland in the Fall of 2019. Covid, shutdowns, and the general hassle of international travel put a wet blanket on the fire to travel farther than a few states away.

The idea of traveling to Denmark was in the works for a while. Before Covid, my partner planned to go with her girlfriends, but Covid and all that. We hatched the idea to go about a year ago, but the timing still wasn’t right to make the trip easy.

The planning was a little more near-term. We decided to go a little over a month before we went. Since we already had enough ideas about going, stitching it all together wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was realizing that we could only do so much in a week.

The Denver airport was about the same as the last time in May we were there. The security line was almost as long, and we were lucky to get in line when we did. A few minutes later and the line was 400 yards longer. We were still there early, about four hours before the flight. The problem with being there that early is forcing yourself to eat in the airport, which is overpriced and of questionable quality.

The food options were better in “A” terminal than the last one we flew out of. But it still seems that many of these restaurants and food kiosks are suffering from a lack of workers and variety in menu options. We chose a sit-down restaurant, Mesa Verde. It’s hard to beat just a veggie burrito. But somehow, I was not impressed. Seems the burrito mainly was rice and canned corn. Maybe I set my standards too high for airport food.

Like I have written before, I like hanging out in airports, which is part of the reason that I love to get there early. Terminal “A” at the Denver airport has an upper balcony centered around the train that brings you in from the security gates. It’s a blast to check out the art installations in the center. The balcony gives you the chance to watch people. Most folks don’t look up. So it makes excellent people-watching.

There are still flubs and delays when it comes to air travel. When we got to the departure gate for the Icelandair flight, a United plane was sitting there. This caused some rather humorous reactions from the flight crew and the pilots. They looked over and realized it was the wrong plane and looked around, confused. Just to make sure, the pilot walked over to get a closer look. Yup, still the wrong plane. He walked back to the counter, and they all stared at it harder. We finally got the right plane after they backed it out and pulled the Icelandair plane in.

So with that delay, the pilot had to make up for the lost time. I have never gone from the gate to wheels up so damn fast. It was like five minutes. The pilot floored it on the taxiway and gassed it as soon as he got pointed straight on the runway. Impressive.

The flight over was hard to sleep on. Neither of us got more than 30 minutes of rest. Then we had a connecting flight from Iceland to Copenhagen. By the time we got to the hotel, it was 1 PM the next day.

The hotel Cabinn City is a trip.  The room is maybe 100 square feet.  It took us a minute to figure out the lights.  You had to put the key card in a slot to get the lights to stay on.  Figuring out the shower was even better.  You had to flip a handle on the sink to redirect the water.  It’s one of those shower/toilet/sink rooms.  Once you take a shower, the floor is wet.  Shower wisely. We also didn’t have a refrigerator in the room.  That made it tough to keep and make cheese sandwiches.  But the grocery stores open at 7 AM.

I had hoped to visit Tivoli Gardens the night we arrived, it was just up the street. But both of us were too dead tired.