Well, it is time for us to travel home today, after a great cruise and our time in Copenhagen. We both slept well last night, and I did not wake up until about 4:30 AM, mainly due to some noise I heard that was obviously someone leaving the hotel with luggage for an early light. The noise was the clunking of wheeled luggage done the flight of stairs from the lobby to the street level, which was underneath our room. Of course, it was partially daylight outside since the sun was already beginning to rise.
I got up and showered and dressed while Stephanie slept until 5:30 AM, which was our scheduled time to get up. I finished some of the packing and worked on putting some pictures in the photo album for Day 2 in Copenhagen.
The wake up call did come in on time, although the hotel phone ringer was set on a really low volume chime, which was not going to wake up any heavy sleeper. I actually thought it was our cell phone alarm ringer going off until I saw the hotel phone was lit up.
When we were both ready, we finalized the packing and weighed the suitcases on our luggage scale, and thankfully, both were under the limit of 23 Kg, which is the close metric equivalent of 50 pounds.
We did a room check to make sure we had everything and headed down to the lobby to check out. We were right on schedule, it was 6:20 AM. The receptionist told us that the breakfast was already being served, even though it was earlier than 7:00 AM, the posted start time for breakfast. We had plenty of time to get a quick bite to eat before walking to the metro, so we went in and had a quick breakfast.
After breakfast, we gathered up our bags and left the hotel for the ten minute walk to the metro station. It was early and there were not a lot of other people walking around, so it made it easier to navigate the sidewalks with our rolling luggage in tow.
We took the elevator down to the metro station since we had luggage, and did not want to climb down the stairs using the normal pedestrian entrance. Every metro is a little different, some have escalators all the way tot he sidewalk level, but in Copenhagen, there is a set of steps from the initial level to the sidewalk level, then escalators down the next couple of levels to the metro tracks. The elevator was quick and very easy. We only had to wait about a minute for the next metro train that was heading to the airport to arrive. It was almost empty, and we were able to find seats and keep our luggage next to us at the seats, which is not easy when the metro is crowded.
It took about 15 minutes for us to arrive at the airport, and then another five minutes of walking to get to terminal 3, which is the closest terminal tot he metro. We checked the departure schedule and saw we needed to walk to Terminal 2 for our KLM flight to Amsterdam. We headed to Terminal 2 and walked up to the desk to check in. We had noticed that there were a lot of self check in terminals as we were walking to the departure desk for KLM, but opted to go to the desk because we head a lot of time, and needed to check our bags. When we got to the desk, the attendant told us we needed to do the self check in first, and then return here to drop off our bags.
We headed over to a self check in terminal, checked in and got our boarding passes. We saw many other passengers also get luggage tags from the machines, but ours did not give us luggage tags for some reason. We had known that the self check in was a possibility, and that you could then use a luggage drop off point for your checked bags, but we were not certain how that worked, and had opted for the desk check in.
We returned to the desk, and now that we had our boarding passes, we could also check our bags. We put them on the scale, and both “passed”, and after showing our passports, we were all set to go.
After we went through the process, it was really easy to do the self check in, and we also found out that the bag drop needed to be for the specific airline you were flying on, which made sense. We sat luggage drop off points for each airline near their check in areas.
We had bout 200 DKK to use so we wandered through the terminal looking for things to purchase. There was a 7-11 in the terminal, and we purchased some chocolate bars and food items. We had gone to a bank and a money exchange, but there was a 40DKK fee to change money, in addition to the terrible exchange rates, so it was not really worth it to exchange the DKK to dollars. We were not really sure it was better buying things either, the high prices were even higher in the terminal, as one would expect.
We then went to a Lagkagehuset cafe, which served all kinds of coffee and breakfast rolls, muffins and Danishes of course, and had a bite to eat. I got a custard danish and Stephanie had a carrot muffin, which was like a carrot cake muffin. Both were really good.
We were not sure if there were more stores inside the airport after you went through security, so we were trying to utilize the DKK in the shops near the departure desks. We still had some DKK left, but we did not see anything else to beneficially use them on so we headed upstairs to go through security. The security here was great, it was fast and efficient. There were at least 20 screening lines to choose from and we were through security in less than five minutes. It was the best and fastest security screening we have ever gone through in an airport.
Once though security, we headed around the corner and were shocked to see how many stores were in the terminal on this side of security. There was a gigantic duty free store, and then an area of shops, restaurants, banks, newsstands, souvenir shops and bars as big as many inside shopping malls. We had to laugh at our attempts to use our DKK on the “other side” when all of this would have been available. We have also been in several airports where there is not much after security, and they keep passengers in holding areas.
KLM Plane For Our Amsterdam Flight Arrives
We headed to our gate and sat down to rest before our flight boarded. We had done a lot of walking to get rid of our DKK. We did see a Red Cross collection container at one of the banks inside the “mall”, and had dropped off our last few DKK in that.
We had about 45 minutes before we boarded out plan to Amsterdam. We did see several people form our cruise ship at the gate for this flight, and there were two men from St. Louis we had talked to on the ship several times, and they were here at taking the same flight, so we chatted with them while waiting to board the plane. They travel a lot without their wives on “guy trips”, but also take trips together as couples.
Stephanie’s Grey Suitcase Heading Into The Plane
We boarded on time for our one hour flight to Amsterdam. The flight was fine and we arrived on time.
We had to go through a passport control, which is the Netherlands version of immigration, and get our passports stamped before heading to the gate for our Delta/KLM flight to Atlanta.
Once through that, we headed to the D1 gate, which was not really a gate, but was a processing area to check in with Delta for the overseas flight. We had to once again show our passports, boarding passes, and answer some security questions before getting a printout of our actual gate assignment. Then we had to go through a separate KLM procedure, again showing our passports and boarding passes to actually “check in”.
Our Delta Airplane For The Flight To Atlanta
We headed to our gate to wait board the plane to Atlanta. There are no Zone Boarding assignments in Europe, but they announced that we would board by rows. After all of the first class, business class and frequent flier status passengers boarded, they called some specific rows in the front of the plane.
Then it just seemed to be general boarding after that so we boarded and headed to our seats near the back of the plane. There was plenty of overhead space, so we put our bags there and settled in for the 9.5 hour flight to Atlanta.
Snacks And Beverages
The flight was nice, they served free alcoholic drinks, and also had a red wine and white wine. They gave us a snack, then a hot lunch and then another snack during the flight,a s well as several rounds of drink service and even distributed large bottles of water. It was nicer than any flight we have taken recently, even our last Delta flight from Atlanta to Barcelona about 18 months ago. We were not sure why the level of service was so much better unless it had to do with being a shared flight with KLM.
Ready To Watch Some Movies
We had in seat entertainment, so we both watched a couple of movies during the flight. The weather was great and the flight was smooth, and landed pretty close to on time in Atlanta.
We had about 90 minutes to make it through all of the customs and immigration in Atlanta before our connecting flight to Columbia. We had been worried about this being enough time since you also have to go through security again which can take longer than immigration.
They had self serve kiosks for customs so we did not have to fill out any forms, which would have been quicker and easier. We had to scan both of our passports in the machine, verify the information, the machine had to take your picture so you had to line your head up in an outline of a person to get to the right distance, and then it printed a document for each of us. When the documents came out, mine had a large x across it, signifying something. We both had to go together so they directed us to a long line of others with X’s on their documents, and it appeared most were non-US citizens. The non-X line was much shorter and faster. The attendant called for anyone in our line with a US passport, so we went to another processing desk with a much shorter line. The customs agent asked us some questions about where we were coming from and if we had more than $800 in purchases to declare, which we did not. He scanned our passports, and then stamped the two documents we received and we went on our way.
Next, we headed over to the luggage carousel to claim our bags, and with luggage in tow, we went to the the next line, which was to hand over the stamped documents we originally received from the machine. We though we might have to do something special there with the X on our document, but the agent told us to go through and we were done.
We then handed our checked luggage back over to the luggage handlers, and headed to out gate in the C concourse. We had to take the train over tot he concourse, but it was a short ride. We walked out to Gate 40, and arrived there just as they were beginning the boarding process. They were going through the frequent flier premium boarding before starting general boarding by Zones. I noticed that we had not been assigned a Zone for boarding on the boarding pass we had obtained in Copenhagen, likely because the do not use the Zone boarding process, so we headed up tot the desk to find out when we were supposed to board. Once the agent finished with the premium passengers, we asked about when to board and he said we could go on now because we had a certain type of bar code on our passes. That was good enough for us.
The flight to Columbia was also on time, landing slightly early. We got off of the plane and headed baggage claim for our luggage. It took a little while for any luggage to come out on the carousel, and our bags came out withing a few minutes. We were glad that all of the flight had been good, and that our luggage had made it with us.
Mom was here waiting in the call area holding to pick us up, and we were finally heading home. It had been a long day, we were already up for 20 hours before we got home.
The trip has been great, but of course we had a few bumps along the way with some of the travel plans at port stops. However, we always look at those as learning opportunities.
We will be adding photos to the posts, and that always makes the reading more enjoyable. Unfortunately, it is time consuming to add the photos in the write up as we go, especially with consecutive port days, and being on the go all day long in Copenhagen. We try to keep up with the writings so that we do not forget what we did each day. It can sort of run together if we do not keep up, and we have to think hard about what we did each day.
We will also add more photos to the photo albums, and hopefully, add descriptions to the photos. Of course, proof reading is always an issue, and maybe one day I will really learn to type. It has been better since we turned of the auto correct, Stephanie read some of the earlier posts and at times, they are a little jumbled with incorrect words.
Thanks to everyone who read along and made comments, it is always nice to know that all of this effort is appreciated.
Bon Voyage.
Chuck & Stephanie