In June of 2016, I took a cruise vacation along the west and north coast of Norway, starting in Copenhagen, Denmark. Along the way, we had flight stopovers in Reykjavik, Iceland.
I'm in the process of writing a book about the trip, and have posted below the first half of Chapter 1's first draft, appropriately formatted for a blog.
CHAPTER 1
COPENHAGEN OR BUST
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L ANNING started over a year ago,
and today is the first day of the plan being put into action.
I could never really explain why, but I
have always wanted to visit Scandinavia. It never mattered which country, as
long as I got there.
Two weeks from now, the question would be
answered.
In the meantime, after all the planning,
phone calls, making reservations, and exchanging of money—by which I mean both
paying bills and trading US dollars for Danish and Norwegian krone—we are on
the way.
It is Friday, June 3rd 2016. I took the day off from work, although I
technically could have worked from home. Last night, when I got home from work,
I proudly exclaimed “I’m on vacation!”
The weather has been nice all day, sunny
and warm. Pretty typical weather for this time of year.
Flightline, the local airport transport
service, has come to pick us up in Salem, NH to take us to Boston’s Logan
Airport. “I have one other pickup, and then we can hit the road,” the driver
says. Fifteen minutes later, we are on Route 93
South headed to Boston. It’s about 4:30PM, and while the northbound traffic is
heavy with people trying to get home from work to start their weekend, it’s
pretty smooth sailing on our side. That is to say, it was smooth until we got
to the Fellsway.
When I drive to Logan, I would take the
highway to Exit 24B towards the airport on Route 1A.
This, however, was not what our driver
did. By the time we got to the Fellsway, southbound traffic was almost as bad
as the northbound, so he got off and took the back roads.
Having no idea where we were, I watched
neighborhoods go by which I had never seen before. We also hit just about every
red light possible. It was getting later, and although we weren’t boarding
until around 8:00PM I was getting very concerned with the time. This was not my
first international flight, but it was my first flight to Europe, and I wanted
to make sure there’s time to get through security. When you add in my
near-phobic hatred of being late, well, it was not good. Finally, over an hour
after leaving the house, we pass under the Tobin Bridge—a few minutes later, we
were there.
Logan Airport originally opened as Boston
Airport on September 8th, 1923, and was rededicated on June 12th,
1943 as General Edward Lawrence Logan Airport. Logan was a lawyer, judge,
military officer and politician from Boston. The airport is located on 1,700 acres of
land in the East Boston neighborhood, and had four terminals: A, B, C, and E.
All international flights from and to
Boston come through Terminal E. This is where we are now.
By the way, if you want to fly in or out
of Boston, this is the airport you want. Do not get this confused with
Manchester-Boston Airport, which is located in Manchester, NH.
Do to modern security procedures, we
cannot drop our bags off at the curb, instead we have to bring them into the
terminal and up to the counter.
All our flights for this trip are on
Iceland Air. We find the appropriate counter and check in. We are told we will
be leaving out of Gate E2A. It is a little after 6:00PM. My worries of being
late, as usual, are unfounded.
We get through security with almost no
incident. Operative word being “almost.” As I walk through the scanner, it goes
off. “Do you have anything in your pockets?” the TSA agent asks.
“No.”
“I’m going to have to pat you down.”
“Uh, OK.”
TSA begins the pat down. Upon reaching my
left pocket, he notices something. No, not that. He asks me to reach into my
pocket, and I discover that one lone penny had wedged itself into the corner,
and that had set off the machine.
Stupid penny.
Having passed security, we make our way
down to the gates, stopping for something to eat along the way. Mom and Dad got
sandwiches, and I got my favorite airport pizza: two slices of cheese and a
medium soda from Sparro’s.
As we ate, we talked about the trip. This
trip was going to have a lot of firsts for me—first overnight flight, first
trip to Europe, first time using Iceland Air (on which are all our flights),
first cruise on Norwegian Cruise Lines. It is all very exciting.
After dinner we headed back to the gate.
Dad took out his Find-A-Word puzzle book, Mom her magazine, and I started
making the first notes in my travel journal, which I got for Christmas. That
journal would eventually become this book.
Soon, we heard the words I’ve been waiting
for announced over the intercom: “We will now begin pre-boarding for Flight 632
to Reykjavik.” Now, I’m going to put aside my feelings on the phrase
“pre-boarding”, after all, that is what we were already doing. What’s really
happening is “boarding”. In any case, we all line up and wait our turn.
I’m in seat 11D, and the boarding is about
half complete when it’s my turn. Mom and Dad go with me and we take our seats.
I like having the window seat and love flying. Looking out the window down at
the world gives me great pleasure. Soon, we would be over the open North
Atlantic Ocean, leaving behind not just my country, but my continent. Land I
would not see again for two weeks.
We have a roughly five hour flight to
Reykjavik, but there’s plenty to do on our Boeing 757. In addition to whatever reading material or
electronics you bring with you (all Iceland Air planes are equipped with
Wi-Fi), there is also the inflight entertainment which is accessed by the
screens located in the seatback in front of you.
Using this system, you can access all
manner of movies, TV shows, games, music, or you can even call up the GPS
system and keep track of where you are. Here, you will see the plane’s location
along with the time at destination, time at departure point, air speed and air
temperature at that altitude, and on the ground at the destination. All this is
shown in English and Icelandic.
While I did keep an eye on this since it
was starting to get dark and so couldn’t really see anything out the window, I
flipped over to see what was available for TV shows. The Big Bang Theory was an option. If you know me, I obviously had
to watch, choosing two episodes: “The 43 Peculiarity”, and “The Parking Space
Escalation.” These are particularly good episodes. Mom started in on Downton Abby, Season 1. Dad stuck with his
puzzles.
A good thing to do when travelling to
Europe is to keep on your same schedule from home. By this time, it was about
11:00 PM, so I shut down and tried to get some sleep.
Instead, I started thinking about
postcards. Who should I send them too?
Obviously Duncan and family. But wait, here’s a great idea. Send one just to
the kids. No, better idea. Send one to each of the kids.
Then I started thinking
about time differences. When it is more than an hour, time changes really mess
me up when travelling. The difference
here is, going east, you are moving ahead. I’m used to going west, usually to
visit my sister. This should be interesting. Copenhagen is six hours ahead. I looked at my watch. It’s already something like 5AM there,
that’s when I usually get up.
While I did, at some point, fall asleep,
it was not for very long.
