Day 8 Moving Day - KEV to CPH
We woke up at 4:20 a.m. to get to the airport for a 7:45 a.m. flight to Copenhagen. Normally I would not get to the airport this early but given that the car rental drop off was not so close to the airport, I gave us extra time. We got through security pretty fast so our gate had not been announced yet. Finally got to the gate at 6:30 a.m. Interestingly, our shuttle driver was from Poland and has only been in Iceland for 2 weeks. He also was doing a graveyard shift from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. he was not a young guy so I thought to myself, why would you leave your country live in Iceland for a rental car shuttle job? I am sure that I am missing something. Rick's note: on the upside he had the car radio set to an 80s station and we got some good 80s tunes on the way to the airport.
My final thoughts on Iceland. It is no doubt a very beautiful country. You can see this in all my photos. Unlike Rick who is reminded of Hawaii, this trip reminds me of our Utah trip, specifically Monument Valley. The land is so beautiful, vast and not so inhabited. I do feel that the Icelandic people are higher functioning than those whom I interacted with in Monument Valley. The people in Iceland are pretty chill and cordial and everyone speaks English so all I ever said in Icelandic was thank you. Icelandic people seem to be an ultra practical people, no frills anywhere.
The Dacia Duster seems to be the standard rental car for visitors to Iceland. The company that owns it is Renault. We rented the car with a fully covered package, which was $125 extra because many people advised that the roads tend to kick up rocks that cracks the windshield. We are very thankful that nothing like that happened but there were definitely a few knocks on the windshield while we were driving.
I wished we could’ve completed our plan to drive the Ring Road but I think we made the right choice to stay in the regions with good weather. On that topic, I feel that we had really good weather, considering that it’s March and people talked about a lot of rain in March. In some ways, it’s still so cold here that there’s no rain, only snow when there’s moisture. We did miss the eastern and northern regions so we will have to plan a summer trip to see Dettifoss and Godafoss (the two big waterfalls). Outside of that, we did everything that we planned to do. The best part is that I saw the northern lights.
Iceland is a fully digitized country so travel is pretty easy. You only need about $100 cash for little things here and there. Since it’s a no tipping country, it makes it even easier. You don’t come to Iceland for food so you have to be ok with the basics, not a whole lot of produce here.
I am really glad that we took this trip. It was all pretty amazing. I will say that my photos are pretty different from those in the blogs that I read who came here in the summer. It looks like a different country. I guess it gives us a good reason to come back. I wonder how much more crowded it is in the summer?
Aside: I saw an article on Yahoo! about passport timelines are now 11-13 weeks for processing and expedited processing is 7-9 weeks ($60 more). They also said that it can take up to two weeks for mailing unless you pay the $20 for expedited shipping. Plan accordingly people if you need to renew your passports.
Some helpful links when in Iceland:
Weather: https://en.vedur.is/weather/forecasts/areas/
Aurora forecast: https://en.vedur.is/weather/forecasts/aurora/#type=total
Road conditions: https://umferdin.is/en
Copenhagen
We were slightly delayed in taking off due to a technical problem. Always feels good when you are already on the plane and are informed that there’s a technical problem. But, they fixed it and the trip was just fine. It’s a two hours and forty minutes flight to Copenhagen. I slept most of the way and it wasn't a fully booked flight so we were able to spread out a bit, which was nice. The strange thing about Copenhagen was that there was no immigration check and no customs check when we arrived. I guess, they let anyone in.
Before we left Iceland, we purchased a 3 day Copenhagen card that will allow us to visit the city without having to stop for ticket purchases. The card costs $122 per person and you just download the app and activate it when you’re ready to use it. We used it to get from the airport to Central station. We are staying at the Andersen Hotel, which is very close to the Central station so it’s super convenient.
By the time we settled and was heading out to check out the city, it was already 3:00 p.m. Our first stop is the Brod bakery. It was about a 15 minutes walk and then we were treated with some delicious baked goods. I will let you know now that it is my intention to find and try as many bakeries while we are here as possible. So, at this bakery, we ordered one almond croissant, one cinnamon roll (it’s called snail here), and one cardamom bun (that’s the nice twisted roll in the photo). Rick and I agree that the snail roll was the best. It's flaky like puff pastry rather than yeasty dough like the cardamom roll. This bakery was quite crowded the entire time that we were there. I would recommend this bakery if you are ever here.
We next took the metro to Nyhavn. This is a super touristy area but it’s where you can take a photo of the colorful buildings that Copenhagen is known for so you have to go and get a picture.
Picture taken, we headed to the Torvehallernekbh food hall to check out what they have. Check out how big the asparagus is.
Bellies full, we went to Netto to get drinks and milk and then headed back to the hotel.
Random photos taken along our walk today. Rick refused to be in the picture of the naked men...
My first impression of Copenhagen is that it’s a very well kept city. Walking around, people are well dressed and even though it’s a metropolitan area, it’s pretty quiet, there’s no one yelling our shooting up drugs or just a lack of homelessness here. It makes me feel sad for San Francisco, and what the visitors must think when they come. That is the first world? Hmmm… Copenhagen is a city that is very biking friendly so you see all over that there are a lot of bikers and bikes. People recommend that we rent bikes and discover the city but I think we will do the canal tour instead.
Unlike Iceland where I counted 9 Tesla’s in total, I am already at 7 just walking around this afternoon. I imagine it’s hard to have a Tesla in Iceland since I didn’t really see any charging stations.
So, that is day 8. Just a touch of exploration. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow and Thursday so we’ll see how much we will be able to explore.
Rick's Notes for the Day:
Just so everyone knows, I am married to a master packer. Rosie is the queen of luggage Jenga. Usually we pack pretty light when we travel (i.e. no checked luggage). For this trip and given the conditions in Iceland, we felt it prudent to each check a bag plus having one carry-on between us. So we have a goodly amount of luggage for this trip and all the bags are full. Rosie is an expert at packing each bag to the maximum and no more. The Iceland Air limit for a checked back is 22kg and when our luggage was weighed at the airport, our large carry-on today it was 21.5kg...what can I say, it is one of her special powers.
It was a long day of travel today. We got up at 4am but neither of us are heavy sleepers and we pretty much never use an alarm to wake up, so we were both up a good portion of the night. Things at the Reykejavik airport were relatively efficient but lugging around three bags and two personal items was a bit of pain from the check-in kiosk to the ticketing station to the baggage check. Our plane was delayed a bit for a unspecified 'technical' issue but I am pretty sure they will just running Windows updates on the plane's software or something like that (plot spoiler: we got to Copenhagen). The plane was less that 50% full so it was nice to have a little elbow room but I will note the legroom on the Iceland Air planes is sad. I very much enjoyed to two glasses of water (with ice) during the three hour flight.
Arrival at CPH was uneventful. It took a while to get the bags but once the bags were had, we got a cart and headed off to the train platform (after a question stop at the information desk asking where the train platform was). Our Copenhagen Card covered the fare and the 20 minute trip was fine altough the train was not very condusive to loading and storing luggage, oh well. Once we got to the Central Copenhagen Station, our hotel was located about 500 meters from the station. So that was a good call, but the cobblestone sidewalks are not the best for luggage wheeling. The hotel (the Andersen Hotel) is a nice, European botique hotel (read: small rooms by American standards). It also has a bit of a younger, cooler vibe than Rosie and I have. I am sure we are referred to as 'the old American couple'.
Rosie covered what we did during the afternoon, but I will double-down on the orderliness of the city. The Danes seem to be good rule followers. There are separate sidewalks for walkers, a separate raised lane for bikes and the road for cars. Pretty much everyone know the rules and follows them. The bicyclists use hand signals for when they are going to turn. The part of the city we saw was super flat so it would be a great place to ride a bike. Also, many of the bikes have little carts in front of them for storage. On one I even saw a lady with her 5-6 year old daughter in the wooden crate in front of her bike. See the stock photo below taken not in the current weather (today it was around 35 F in Copenhagen).
We also rode the subway train on the way to Nyhavn. I was super easy to figure out (thanks again, Google Maps) and it was clean and quiet. The whole system seems very efficient. The train we got on shows up every three minutes. While the station did not have any amenities like a Japanese subway station, the vibe is somewhat similar.
Well, that is about all for today. Lots of exploring and pastries to be had over the next couple of days so time for night-night. I promise the rain will not deter our pastry sampling across Copenhagen!
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