Our journey home

Unfortunately our vacations always come to an end at some point...the end to this one was fun though as it was a two day journey home that gave us stops in two more cities and countries for that matter. From Oslo we flew to Copenhagen again on Scandinavian Airlines for an overnight stay in Copenhagen. We arrived early evening, hopped on the train to the city centre. We ended up in a train car that was rather lively with a group of people celebrating a couple's marriage with some beers. It was all in good fun. Our hotel was situated on the Copenhagen Harbour and was a short walk from the central train station. We stayed in a great harbour view corner room on a high floor. The view overlooking the harbour and into the town across the water was quite beautiful. There was a kayak water polo event taking place that we watched a little from our room. By the time we got ourselves outside, it was already done. It was quite windy in the evening with a few rain sprinkles, but that didn't stop us from walking along the water and over to the city centre to Stroget Street which is the world's longest pedestrian street at 3.2km long. The street is lined with shops and restaurants and was crowded with people. Not much has changed since our last visit there. We were looking for somewhere to have a light dinner and I remembered enjoying some good crepes last time around. We found a great little French oasis nestled away in the inner City Centre a little off the beaten track called La Galette. The restaurant has a distinctly French atmosphere. We both ended up ordering two crepes which were absolutely delicious and quite reasonably priced.

Thankfully they took credit card for payment because we didn't have any Danish Krone on us and for one night didn't really want to get any. After our "dinner" we walked around some more before calling it a night knowing that the next day would be a long leg in the journey as our flight was now taking us bak to North American, Washington D.C. to be exact. 

In the morning we enjoyed a wonderful breakfast at the hotel lounge before heading to the train station to catch the relatively short train ride to the airport; it's only 8km away. We got to the airport in plenty of time before our flight. Security line up was quite short, but I also found their security agents to be quite efficient and thorough. This fight was also on Scandinavian Airlines but this time we were on a plane that had only recently been retrofitted with their latest seats and such. It was very nice and our seats were very roomy. Of course it helped that our tickets were booked in business class. The amount of room and the lay flat feature of the seats was pretty awesome. One thing I did find a little strange with the European business class seats was that the seat belts also had a over the shoulder belt, not just the lap belt feature. Thankfully the over the shoulder belt only needed to be worn during take off and landed because I actually found it a little uncomfortable. Again, the in flight service was quite impressive; the flight attendants actually appeared to enjoyed their jobs; and that makes a huge difference. I managed to get a few hours sleep with the help of a little dinner drink and a sleeping aid which was good because I knew that when we landed in Washington we'd want to do some sight seeing and I'd need to have some energy for that. Sleeping on planes is not something that comes easily for me regardless of the type of seat I'm in. I think it's all the noises that I can't drown out. 

This leg of our flight was a little interesting....we were overnighting in Washington, but were already checked in for our flight to Montreal and our bags were checked through to Vancouver but we were told we'd need to pick them up in Washington. When we arrived in Washington we were directed to an area of the airport and not advised that our luggage would be come out at a different carrousel than the main flight. So we stood waiting and waiting and waiting and not seeing our luggage come out, we started to wonder if we had been told to go to the wrong arrivals area. We had been so fortunate until now that our luggage had arrived at all our different destinations. After waiting for a good 30-40 minutes we finally decided to go talk to the agent who directed us to where we were and told him that our luggage hadn't come out. At this point the agent tells us that our luggage would actually come out of a different carrousel. At this point we were both incredibly annoyed that we had wasted all this time waiting by the wrong carrousel and also that the agent hadn't told us that to begin with when he told us which arrivals area to go to. We walked over to this other carrousel only to see a bunch of luggage sitting around unclaimed and we just became that much more annoyed thinking that our luggage was just sitting there, but after looking around our luggage wasn't there. Needless to say at this point the annoyance level for me is at a boiling point and panic is starting to set in thinking that our luggage was either mistakenly taken by someone or it didn't make it. After about another 20 minutes or so and a few more conversations with the agent, finally one bag comes down the carrousel, but where is the other bag. Utterly annoyed at this point and after one more conversation with the agent who says they will come over in about 10 minutes the second bag magically comes down the carrousel all by its lonesome. Very strange it was the only bag to come out, but something makes me think they called someone and they found it randomly sitting somewhere and it finally triggered it to be delivered. What a waste of an hour considering we had little daylight to explore the city. 

US Capital building 

We hired an Uber to bring us to our hotel which ended up being about half the price of taking a taxi. We managed to get a super awesome price on the hotel and lucked out to get an upgraded room on a high floor with a peekaboo view of the Capital building. Knowing daylight was limited, we set out to walk around and see as much of some of the main sights as possible. What we hadn't fully expected was that Washington was going through a major heatwave and so even at 6pm it was 35C but it felt like 45C. And in that kind of heat, you don't really want to be exuding yourself too much unless you have lots of water. We had some water which quickly turned warm and was quickly consumed. So combining long flight to Washington, annoyance and wasted time finding our luggage, immense heat, time zone change with little sleep, I may have gotten a little grumpy. Our walk was quite scenic and interesting. What I didn't quite understand was that the distances between the sights and thought that they were much closer; at least they looked much closer on the map than they actually were. Z suggested we rent bikes to take us around which in hindsight would have been a fantastic idea but I was convinced (and turned out to be extremely wrong) that the sights we wanted to see were close together and wouldn't be much trouble to get to before it got dark. I was certainly wrong...did I mention I was also exhausted which meant added to every little thing that wasn't quite the way I wanted to become something that annoyed me? The beautiful sunning clear evening started to get dark with some ominous clouds rolling in. We started to hear thunder in the distance and the dark clouds coming closer and looking like at any moment we would be caught in a torrential downpour. Thankfully the rain never came, but the thunder continued on for some time. We managed to get ourselves to the grounds of the Capital building which was under renovation at the time and had scaffolding around it so the pictures from afar are better than up close. From there we walked along the National Mall, passed the Smithsonian museum and castle towards the Washington monument. I had

Washington monument

wanted to go to the Lincoln Memorial, but as my judgement of distance was incredibly off and darkness was setting in, after some disagreement caused by me, we made our way to the White House instead. I did get a picture at a distance over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting pool of the Lincoln Memorial. A visit will have to be saved for another time. By this point we needed some more water and forked out $3USD for a bottle. Seemed a little steep but we were in a tourist area and about to see the White House. Security is quite tight and very visible, for obvious reasons, around the White House. I'm not really sure how much more security is there that we didn't actually see. The grounds are entirely fenced in and there are large microphone/listening devices (or at least that's what we thought they were) on the inside of the fence. The White House is situated quite a distance back from the street, again probably done for security reasons. Certainly different from what we saw in Oslo where the royal palace is open for people to walk right up to. 

White House

All in all we had a great evening visit to Washington and discovered that there is a lot to do and see there which we'll have to do on another trip. 

The next day we flew home through Montreal. After the debacle with our luggage when we arrived in Washington we figured the safest thing to do would be to get our luggage retagged for the journey home. In typical AC fashion, we found out the morning of that our leg from Montreal to Vancouver had an equipment change, also known as a plane change, and this resulted in us being reassigned seats that didn't have us sitting together. Our flight was also delayed. We tried our hardest to get on an earlier flight but all flights into Vancouver were oversold, our original flight included. When we finally did get to board our last flight on this trip, we did manage to get some people to move around and we did end up getting to sit together which was really a nice way to end this long journey home. 

So after 15,240 flying miles, travelling to and through 8 countries, walking countless kilometres, running a total of 26.1km over two days in two different races which included my first half marathon, exploring new cultures, sights and many new and amazing things, this adventure after 16 days came to an end. This one will always hold a special place in my heart and memory. 

"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." ~ Saint Augustine

We are making our way through the book and our novel is certainly not finished yet. These globetrotter won't sit still for long and another adventure is bound to be around the corner. 

To travel is to live....until next time! Life is good!!