Copenhagen, Denmark
Wednesday, June 16
And so, we finally come to my last full day in Europe. The trip had been great so far, but unlike a lot of iconic trips I'd been on - Philmont, Jambo... mostly scouting trips, I guess - I really hadn't been able to fall into a routine. I suppose there were a number of factors leading into this, including the fact that I was frankly growing tired of packing up all my things and sitting in a cramped bus seat, only to find myself walking long distances through yet another city with lots of traditional brick and stone architecture, stopping occasionally to look at the city hall or parliament or an old palace or something. The fact that I was coming within a few hundred dollars of my credit limit while at the same time growing tired of the added expense of using cash owing to all the transaction fees at the ubiquitous Forex exchange bureaus.
On the money front, I guess it's kind of unfortunate that my first stop on the trip was in Norway - widely thought to be the second most expensive country to visit in Europe after budget-busting Russia. It just instilled in me this mindset that instead of getting out and having crazy experiences and taking tours and trying new foods, I should instead be aimlessly walking about, staring at the outsides of so many generically historic structures and refusing to spend money on anything other than hotels, buses, and maybe some public transit to enable my peripatetic wandering habit. Oh, right, and restaurants are pretty expensive, so I should probably stick to my pop tarts and beef jerky, too.
All that was well and good, but quite frankly the whole extreme thriftiness mindset that I had going got really burdensome as the trip progressed. Even on my first trip through Stockholm, I walked past a mongolian barbecue place - and boy, do I love me some mongolian barbecue - without even thinking of stopping for dinner since I was so set on getting back to my luggage locker for some beef jerky. Such was the way I'd spent my 15 days on the continent so far, and initially all indications were that I'd spend my 16th and final day in Europe in much the same way - wandering around, looking at things, and spending as little money as possible. However, something happened the previous night on the way back to my hotel that changed my mind.
On Tuesday night, on my way back from doing a bit of sightseeing and reconnaissance at the airport, I'd stopped in at the central train station to make a few phone calls. It was around 10:30 when I began working my way back across the six blocks to my hostel. The first bit of the journey took me along a high concrete wall. I'd been this way before, and through a bit of research I figured out that this was the boundary of Tivoli Gardens, the second oldest and arguably most famous amusement park in the world. Based on what I'd read, I knew it was a relatively small park and that the rides they had could barely be called "thrill rides" by American standards, but owing to the history and the spectacle of the place I'd initially been planning to try to stop by. However, admission to the park runs $30, and that doesn't even include rides. Given my miserly habits, shelling out fifty bucks when there was still a whole multitude of free attractions to see seemed wasteful when I only live 20 minutes away from Kings Dominion back in the states.
The big Tivoli sign was kind of a giveaway.
But as I crossed the street from the train station, rounded a corner, and headed along the outside of the back edge of the park, I could hear a bit of noise seeping over the wall from Tivoli. First, I heard upbeat music done in a stereotypically classic theme park fashion which gradually came to be mixed in with peals of frolicsome laughter and excited shrieks. I could see a few of the taller rides peeking over the walls, including the park's single steel coaster, which was lit up for the evening with a spectacular array of LEDs creating the illusion of a glowing streak trailing behind the train as it rocketed past, 40 feet overhead. They say the grass is always greener on the other side, and I've got to agree that Tivoli certainly uses its central location to project the image of a glittering, mirthful, and festive refuge in the heart of downtown. It truly looked to be a land of joy... and joyness.
It was at that moment that I decided to do a hasty rearrangement of my schedule for Wednesday. It was then that I decided to go to Tivoli.
Wednesday, July 16... for real this time
The fact that I had resolved to go to Tivoli didn't change the fact that it was still going to cost me $50 to get in. With the most expensive rides costing the equivalent of $6 a pop, the breakeven point on Tivoli's unlimited ride pass was a mere 3.5 rides, hence the $50 total cost. Given that my home park of Kings Dominion has what I consider to be much better rides while only costing about $35, I had to do some schedule shuffling in order to make the most time for Tivoli as I could.
And with that, I managed to rouse myself and be out of the hotel by 8am in order to start my abbreviated tour of town. Fortunately, my guidebook had just the thing: a bicycle tour of Copenhagen. The city has a fairly large system of bike stands where you can check in and out a bicycle using a day pass you purchase from a nearby kiosk. Unfortunately, due to my stinginess with money and the trouble I knew I'd have with checking in my bike and then having to wait for somebody to return with one at the bike stands near my various destinations... I wound up not getting a bike for the tour. I mean, the circuit that Let's Go Europe had laid out around town was only 9 km long, which without stops shouldn't take much more than 90 minutes to walk.
So that's how I found myself in the middle of rush hour standing in the plaza outside yet another town hall in yet another Scandinavian capital city. It wasn't open yet, and I wasn't about to wait for it let alone spend money to see the inside. I mean, who does that anyway?
Oh, I should add that this isn't actually the town hall but instead a hotel called the Scandic Palace located next door. I thought it looked a lot more interesting, especially given the lighting conditions.
And so I continued around on H.C. Andersens Boulevard past throngs of motorists and cyclists alike until I reached the Botanisk Have, the city's botanical gardens. The whole place was elaborately landscaped and filled with a variety of plants from across northern Europe. Unfortunately, my timing was off a bit again and the greenhouse didn't open until 10am... and by this point it was barely 8:40. I whiled away some time looking in the windows of the cactus house and climbing around past tranquil - if artificial - streams across rolling hills and small ravines - both also probably fake.
I contemplated skipping ahead to my next destination, the Satens Museum for Kunst (National Modern Art Gallery), but they didn't open until 9:30am. I'd really made a mess of things that morning, and to make matters worse I was fairly exhausted from a combination of getting up early that morning and ridiculously early the morning before to see the bridge. However, the morning was absolutely gorgeous - at the perfect temperature, a sunny level of illumination, and a refreshingly light breeze - so I decided to fix both problems at once and stretch out on a park bench, surrounded by a meadow that somehow managed to be quiet and tranquil despite being 50 meters from the main street through downtown, and take a half hour nap.
I can say that the whole thing was quite glorious. But in all too short of a time, my alarm went off and it was time to move on to see some modern art. As it turns out, the modern art museum is free on Wednesdays... which meant that as I got there right at the opening they were absolutely swamped with school groups. So I poked my head in, looked around the first floor, and decided it wasn't worth sticking around to see more oversized pencils, false color paintings of famous people, and blank canvasses masquerading as sophisticated art, so I left.
Next up on the list was the Rosenborg Slot, one of the many old palaces they have here in the city. The exterior architecture was quite intriguing, and the building itself is quite narrow for how tall it is especially in contrast with modern styling. But the real reason I was there was because of its remarkable period interiors. They had rooms decorated in a multitude of styles, including wall carvings etched in wood painted black to bring out the contrast, rooms draped in tapestries, a room full wall-to-wall of blown glass, a matching room stuffed to the gills with china, and many more. This ridiculously over-the-top decoration eventually culminated in the Long Hall on the top floor, where the solid silver coronation chair (different from a throne, apparently) was guarded by three full sized lion statues - also made from cast silver. As if that wasn't enough extensive ornamentation, in the basement they even have the Danish Royal Treasury, featuring crowns and swords and china sets and all kinds of valuables as well.
Unfortunately, while all that stuff was spectacular to look at, I once again do not have any photos of it. However, unlike previous places where photography was forbidden, it was welcome here - you just had to pay an extra $4 to get a photography pass. I believe I've already established how I felt about spending money.
From there, I walked through yet another sizeable park and back on to the local street network. Apparently, Copenhagen has passed an ordinance that by the year 2015 all citizens must be able to reach a park or beach on foot in less than 15 minutes, hence the shiny and new park I’d visited the night before. Anyway, I continued across town (albeit in the narrow direction) to get to another palace complex, the Amalienborg Slot. This palace complex is actually comprised of four stately buildings standing on opposite corners of a large pedestrian square. I toured the restored residences of several past kings, including the suite of rooms where the current queen grew up, before heading back out into the plaza to marvel at the Marmorkirken (Marble Church) just west of the square.
Even though there were still a few exhibits to see at Amalienborg, including the suite of rooms that the crown princess was going to me moving into after she got married the following month – seriously, what’s with all the Scandinavian royal weddings? – as well as another changing of the guard ceremony, my memories of Tivoli from the previous night kept driving me urgently forward. There was no time to dawdle.
Picking up speed, I rounded the final corner of my giant loop of Copenhagen and headed south along the river to Nyhavn (“havn” means harbor), a glorified canal home to lots of cafes and sailboats. It sure was scenic, and even though I passed through without stopping I still got a decent chance to see the sights since the canal’s sailboat-friendly design meant that there were no bridges to cross it for about 500 meters.
After traveling along the canal for a while, I was finally able to turn back south and was soon confronted with the imposing façade of Christiansborg Palace. However, perhaps more startling than the dark brown building or its beefy spire was what I saw in between me and it – traffic. Despite the fact that bike riders make up 36% of commuter trips and all the environmental mumbo jumbo that the city preaches, I must say that Copenhagen was the only city I visited in Scandinavia where I saw any significant level of congestion. I guess that speaks towards how many more travelers the town must have than any of the other capital cities. And this picture below was taken in the early afternoon, so it’s not like it’s the rush hour or anything. Lunch rush, I guess?
Anyway, this palace – which has burned down and been subsequently rebuilt 3 times in the last 200 years – was built by King Christian 4. That man sure built a lot of stuff and put his initials on everything. However, since Denmark became a constitutional monarchy, the place now houses parliament.
However, just like in Stockholm – the only other capital city I visited with a stately palace more than 100 years old – I was more interested in seeing the structure and the architecture of the place than the decorations or operations. And with that I headed down to see the ruins of an old palace below the current structure for the second time in the trip. Just like before, it was cool to see the product of excavations made during the construction of the new facility. Here, most of the old foundations were remarkably well preserved, except for where the new structure had its foundations. I guess it helps if you have good plans and drawings of the palace before it burns down, unlike in the really really old palace ruins I saw in Sweden.
Anyway, I found the ruins of the old palace to be quite fascinating, but unfortunately that put me back behind my arbitrary schedule once again. To compound my difficulties, my next and last stop of the day was the impressive (and free) Nationalmuseet, the National Museum of Denmark.
The Nationalmuseet is really something, especially given how small the country of Denmark is. They’ve got exhibits on all kinds of ancient cultures across all the continents, from clothing to weapons to canoes to musical instruments, and that’s just one of the wings. And so it should show you just how focused on getting to Tivoli I was that I was able to view all the exhibits in only 62 minutes.
I blazed past their collection of historically furnished palace rooms (yep, this building also used to be a palace), wandered quickly but respectively through the coin collection so as not to upset the nice old lady trying to answer questions, and continued past their African exhibits, the Egyptian rooms, the plant collection, yet another painstakingly restored Viking burial ship, and a bunch of other stuff that I scarcely remember anymore.
Unfortunately, the part I got to last was the most interesting. The section on Denmark itself had only recently been through a major restoration, so they were shiny and intelligently organized and – most notably – they had English language captions. And so it was that my interest got the better of me and I broke step to stop and look in more detail at some of the exhibits. But eventually I had that past me, and it was just getting to be 2pm by the time I headed back to my hotel to drop of everything but my wallet and camera. No sense being weighted down for Tivoli!
The Part Where I Go On and On about Tivoli
I walked around the long way to the front gate just to size the place up a bit. Now having completed a full circuit of the place, I was taken aback by just how small Tivoli Gardens actually are. I suppose that with prime real estate between Kobenhavn H (the central train station) and town hall square, there’s really not any space available to expand. But by this point I’d seen everything I thought was interesting – albeit quickly – so doing anything other than continuing into Tivoli would have been backtracking. So I paid my $30, forked over another $20 for the unlimited rides wristband, and passed under the elaborate entrance archway (shown below at night for effect) into a land of merriment and wonder.
There truly is something magical about Tivoli. It’s hard to describe. The whole place is bathed in this otherworldly glow, where the paint seems that much brighter, the trees just a little bit greener than normal, and where the music is slightly more whimsical than you’d think something piped in through all-weather speakers should be.
I’m even having trouble comparing it to a well-themed American theme park like Busch Gardens or even Disney. Sure, in those places they do a phenomenal job of making the buildings portray a certain feeling of where you’re supposed to be, with the shrubberies trimmed just so to create the illusion of being in a fairy tale or ancient Rome or what have you. But at Tivoli, everything just… is. There’s no themeing at all - they don’t have to pretend to be historic and European, because that’s what they are. Tivoli doesn’t have to try to be something it’s not, because it’s one of the oldest amusement parks in the world, so it really is THE original amusement park. Everywhere else is trying so hard to be like Tivoli that when you actually get there and see the effortlessness and the straightforward, genuine manner with which the park presents itself, it’s just amazing. You don’t even care that none of the roller coasters go more than 50’ in the air and that the rides in general are kind of lame. You’re at Tivoli, and everything is fantastic.
And it certainly doesn’t hurt that everybody in the park is just as wonderstruck as you are. No matter how tame or predictable the ride may be, there was always some Dane screaming their head off in some combination of sheer terror and mirthful ecstasy. And so it went that at those moments where I was starting to feel disappointed by the limited selection of rides or even other things like my glasses being broken or the massive credit card bill I was going to have when I got back home in spite of my penny pinching, I just had to think about how good of a time everybody around me was having to be re-infected by the irrational exuberance. As the Daft Punk song goes, “and it looked like everyone was having fun; the kind of feeling I’d waited so long for.”
I wound up entering the park proper just before 2:30pm, which gave me 8 hours to enjoy myself before everything closed up for the world-renowned Tivoli Illuminations. So suffice it to say that I’m going to skip large parts of the afternoon, like the ill-fated and nausea-inducing tour I made through all of the state fair-style rides with all their jerks and jolts, back to back to back to back, or my short-lived attempt to ride all the kiddy rides just so I could say I rode
every ride at Tivoli.
Anyway, in looking for the attraction to ride first, there was really only one option in my mind: the unimaginatively named and astonishingly old Rustshebanen ("Slide"). It’s kind of tame in terms of the ride itself, but when you realize how old it is and come to understand that this means it lacks the modern three-wheel system present in modern coasters – where there are wheels above, below, and on the insides of the tracks to keep the train from flying off as it crests a hill or rounds a corner – things start to get significantly more thrilling, and fast. In fact, in order to keep the train from completely leaving the tracks, the park installed a chair in the center of the train so that one of the operators (in the black jacket in the photo below) can ride along with the train and apply some braking in key locations. Note that I say “completely leaving the tracks” – the operators I rode with seemed to make it their mission to push the train as close to derailing as possible; all for the enjoyment of the passengers, of course.
Now, I’ve been badmouthing Tivoli in terms of having rides that were exciting throughout this whole blog entry. I should say that that’s not entirely true… you just have to find something that really sets you off to be truly excited. For me, I’m used to getting my kicks from tall, fast roller coasters, or at least something with a good launch at the beginning from all my time at King’s Dominion as a kid. Tivoli just didn’t have that kind of thing.
However, what it did have were some decently tall tower rides. Given the fact that I’m made more than a bit uneasy around heights, the fact that Tivoli has the world’s tallest carousel at over 250’ tall. Note that carousels are the ones that go around horizontally and that it’s not a ferris wheel as I originally misread in the brochure. I don’t have any photos of this ride because the park staff was especially diligent in having us all completely empty our pockets and take off our shoes so that something didn’t fall out and strike another guest while our especially dangly basket seats were swinging around high over everyone’s head. They did everything short of a pat down to make sure that we were clean. Crazy. But anyway, after about a minute of spinning off kilter high above downtown Copenhagen, I’d grown apprehensive about the structural integrity of the tower and had overanalyzed the spectacular view enough to be ready to come down.
And so come down I did, only to go right back up on a drop tower. I must say, drop towers are one of the best ways I know of to truly enjoy myself. I get so apprehensive on the way up that when we finally do drop down to the ground again, I feel such a deep sense of relief and emotion that the whole experience makes me all tingly. Even though I was properly terrified by the last trip, I rode that thing three times in a row.
Just down the way was probably one of the most frightening rides I’d ever been on at a theme park. [I’d just like to state for the record that I keep typing “them park” and it’s really bothering me now.] It’s the one to the left in the photo below. You and 3 others strap into a row of seats decorated to look like an airplane and proceed to go through a virtual dogfight. As the big blue arm begins to rotate faster and faster, your plane spins through all 3 axes to get everybody good and properly disoriented. At the end of the preprogrammed ride, the plane locks in straight and the arm continues speeding up until eventually you’re all pulling 5 G and it gets really uncomfortable to breathe.
And the guys I went with wanted to ride the backwards program.
Now that I look back on it, I really enjoyed the experience. I guess that’s the way it is with pushing boundaries on rides. But I’ve got to say, going through with the ride itself has got to have been one of the least enjoyable things I did on the trip.
The group before us enters the “Nitro Spin” section of the program. This picture is taken looking straight up.
As you can probably guess, by this point I was getting a bit tired of the high-thrill rides, so I grabbed an enormous ice cream cone and watched the sun continue ever-so-slowly towards the horizon. There’s a reason why they schedule the illuminations at 10:30pm – it’s only just started to get dark by that point.
But I still had a few hours until I needed to worry about staking out a point on the shore to see the show. So why not go on a relaxing, mind-numbingly slow boat ride. Wait, you say these are bumper boats? Very slow bumper boats? All the better, I guess. At least I wasn’t going to be banging up my knees on the insufficiently spaced dashboard like I did on the fun but painful bumper cars.
Something else that Tivoli has that they like to show off is a storied history of ballet. To get a break from the rides that I’d already ridden multiple times by that point, I went to see that evening’s show. It was kind of short on plot, in the same sense that the guys in the scene below are short on having real pants.
I honestly preferred the musical acts that performed sporadically throughout the park. However, despite the fact that there were two separate bandstands, one for classical and one for jazz, you could tell that the same band was doing both shows since between performances you’d see the occasional clump of overdressed people in bow ties and dinner jackets making their way across the park while VERY LOUDLY cracking their knuckles. That part was a bit eww, but the music was great.
Do you see how bright it still is at 10:30? Sheesh, and I thought I’d traveled far south. Anyway, here’s the world-famous Tivoli Illuminations in progress. They were pretty spectacular, and the music was good and trippy – perfect for a laser show. The only thing that made it a bit of a disappointment is that I’d been led to believe that there would be fireworks. And there were no fireworks. Oh well.
Eventually, the illuminations ended and it came time to cram in one or three more rides of the steel coaster, bringing my total for the day up to 9 runs. I was lucky enough to time it perfectly that I got to the gate for my 9th ride just as they were closing up for the night. Since there were only four of us in the station for that last ride, we all crammed in side by side by side by side in the front row for once last go ‘round.
And so, for the fifth time in six nights, I had a truly fantastic trip-ending experience. Tivoli’s steel roller coaster is a floorless coaster, so in the front row your feet are dangling out over nothing as the train rockets around the circuit, through loops and barrel rolls and bunny hops back to the beginning again. And so as the four of us swooped through the gradually dimming twilight as the lights of Tivoli came on one by one under our feet, it really seemed like we were flying. The ride may not be tall or aggressive or particularly fast, but at that moment on that day I can safely say that none of us on that train would rather have been anywhere else. And I guess that’s all anybody can really ask from a roller coaster.
On my way out of the park, Tivoli was ablaze with twinkling lights. Even the moon decided it wanted to get in on some of the action, trying to blend in with some of the turrets on one of the park’s three different starred restaurants.
I mean, what else is there to say? The whole trip has been great up until this point, and it turned out that going to Tivoli was the perfect way to put an exclamation point at the end of the trip.
Mmm, would you look at that? Fantastic.
Thursday, June 17
By the time I got back to the hotel room, it was Thursday, and Thursday was my day to leave. My flight was to depart at 9:50am, and according to Finnair’s website I was to allow 3 hours at the airport. That meant that I needed to leave the hotel room around 6am to allow myself 15 minutes to walk to the metro and then some padding in case the train was late or something. And so I started packing, knowing that even at that point I had 5 and a half hours until I needed to wake up.
I talked to one of the Korean girls sharing my co-ed bunkroom for a while as I packed. She’d been planning a trip to Tivoli the following day, so I gave the park a favorable review, with a good deal of subtlety compared to the glowing praise I’ve been giving it in this post lest she not be captivated by the magic to the extent that I had been. The reason that I bring this up is that after hearing my abbreviated story, she became the second Asian female in as many cities to compliment me on my voice. And here I thought that I was just rambling on in a gravelly monotone. I guess I must sound especially suave in comparison to your average Asian male, in much the same way that I immediately think all British men are sophisticated based on the Patrick Stewarts of the world.
The Saga of the Rudest Hotel Guest in the World
But I digress. The main thing I’d like to highlight about my 6ish hour stay in the hostel that night was that I got to meet the Rudest Hotel Guest in the World. He was Greek, I later found out, and even after the Korean and I had quieted down out of consideration when the other group in the room had turned in for the night, he continued to talk on his cell phone for about 20 minutes. By that point, I was finished packing and had begun brushing my teeth. At the same time, the Korean had stepped out to get a drink from downstairs. She’d been reading, and had left her little overhead light on so she could find her way back in the curtain-induced darkness of the room.
However, when the Greek finished his call, he immediately got in bed, turned over on his side, and looked at me and demanded that I turn off the Korean’s light.
“She’s just stepped out for a moment,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll be right back.”
“I certainly hope so,” he growled. “That light is keeping me from going to sleep.”
Now, one incident of not realizing the irony of your situation hardly makes for the Rudest… in the World title. No, that came in the morning.
I got up around 5:45, thinking (correctly) that nobody else would be up by that point and that 30 minutes would be plenty of time to shower and throw on my cleanest shirt. However, just as I was gathering my clothes and soap, the Greek must have been roused by the slight clink of my belt buckle, as he shot upright in bed, leaped down from his top bunk with a crash, and dashed right past me into the bathroom. I practically held the door open for him.
“Wow, he really must have had to pee,” I thought to myself.
So I stood vigil outside the bathroom to hold my place in line. Five minutes went by. After seven minutes of hearing nothing, I knocked on the door. There was a loud, mucous-filled nose clearing sound, and then a toilet flush. Figuring he was on his way out, I stood up again to be ready to swoop in and take my shower.
And then the sink started running. That was followed by 10 minutes of shaving noise and an inordinate amount of nose clearing.
And then the shower started. 17 minutes in the bathroom, and you’re just getting to your shower? Now, I think that’s rude, even if you didn’t just cut in a line of 1 to get to the restroom. I hope I’m not being too judgmental.
So by that point I knew I wasn’t going to be able to shower. I apologized in advance to all my future seatmates for that day, slapped on some deodorant, and threw on a shirt. Unfortunately, I still had to wait for the guy to finish his shower since my towel was still in the bathroom. I was in such a huff to grab my towel that I plum forgot to actually use the bathroom.
And so I was behind schedule leaving the hostel, and all I did that morning was put on a shirt.
Back to the Story
Fortunately, like the vast majority of plane rides I’ve ever taken, my time at the airport was exceptionally smooth. I walked right up to the check-in counter, zipped thorough security in under five minutes, and was at my gate under an hour after I picked up my towel. Wow.
I had yet another window seat for the departing flight, so as we climbed out of Kastrup airport I got another great view of the Øersund Bridge, this time from above. If you look carefully, you can even spot the grid of 30-some wind turbines on the right side of the photo, and that doesn’t even account for the row of 15 north of the bridge from Tuesday night. The latter array supplies 1/5 of Copenhagen’s power supply, I later learned.
On my longer flight, I got more desperate for things to see. I’d already watched
Invictus, which was really the only movie they had that I hadn’t seen that I was interested in. So… I watched
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, which I must say that no matter how much the title is asking for a sequel should almost certainly not be given one. I also watched some episodes of Burn Notice that I’d already seen from Season 2, before getting bored and playing the trivia game for a while. Their questions were really quite obscure and therefore no fun, so I quickly moved on to Hangman, which was quite enjoyable. In addition to some deviously short words, the “hard” level setting also included some fairly tricky words, like the one in the photo below. And there was even an “expert” mode on top of that.
Customs in New York was a pain, much more so than on the way out. Unlike in Helsinki upon entering the EU, in America I was required to wait in an exceptionally long line to talk to a customs agent for 25 seconds, before I actually was required to pick up my checked baggage and carry it up three floors to the arrivals hall where I had to re-check my baggage and go through security again. Seems like that whole mess could have been accomplished with one conveyer belt and a stairwell, but I guess not all countries that fly to the US have uniform security standards. Oh well.
Long story short, I’d been looking forward to getting some greasy pizza or something in the airport, since apparently I don’t have the same hesitation about spending US Dollars as I do for foreign currency. However, all of these customs and check-in and security processes meant that my 135-minute layover only gave me about 20 minutes before the scheduled boarding call.
So I resolved to get some food once my dad picked me up at National Airport in DC. And just after I called him to confirm that, my flight got delayed an hour due to runway repairs, of all things. Meh, what’re you going to do about it?
After only 35 minutes of delay, we were airborne and flying across a cloud-covered New Jersey afternoon. By sheer luck since American Airlines (who operated my US flight routes) wouldn’t [NOTE: this post is now over 6,000 words long] let me reserve a seat, I had another window seat for this journey. For the first half hour or so, the clouds gave the appearance of a snow-covered forest of rolling hills, stretching off to the horizon. It was really pretty cool.
I love flying, let me make that clear. So it came to be that in all too short of a time, I was back at National Airport, only 35 feet from where I’d sat 17 days earlier gazing across my plane towards the Washington Monument. Since my dad was meeting me, I had no time for sentimentality, however. I descended down into the bowels of the airport to pick up my bags, and that’s where he found me.
All in all, it was a great trip. I hope to be able to make it back sometime.
Facts and Figures
Just to wrap up, I’d like to present some statistics from the trip.
It took…
- 18 days, including:
- 11 nights in hostels
- 2 nights on buses
- 2 nights on ferries
- 1 night on a train
- 1 night on an airplane
…to visit:
- 4 capital cities, where there were:
- 4 languages spoken (plus English)
- 4 currencies used
- 4 US embassies
- 2 city transportation museums
- 3 guard changing ceremonies
- 4 city halls
- 3 national parliament buildings
- 9 royal palaces
- 6 preserved forts
- 4 “National Museum”s
…during that time, I ate:
- 8 free breakfasts
- 2 purchased breakfasts
- 0 free lunches
- 6 purchased lunches
- 3 free dinners
- 4 purchased dinners
…that makes 12 meals that I bought in 18 days thanks to:
- 12 pop tarts
- 2 lb of beef jerky
- (plus a few raisins, Starbursts, and Finnish strawberries)
All in all, I traveled:
- 9,692 miles by plane
- 854 miles by bus
- 620 miles by train
- 560 miles by boat
- 114 miles by foot
- 112 miles by car
- (plus some by streetcar, subway, and tram)
…making my average speed over the 18 days around 28.5 miles per hour. Without the airplanes, that drops to 5.6 miles per hour.
Finally, I’d like to thank everybody who read about my European adventure. I might write a bit more about some other events from this summer and beyond, but given just how wordy I’ve started to make these updates, it might not be worth it. In any case, thanks for reading, and in case you’ve been with me for all 12 installments, let me give you a big round of applause, because you’ve just finished reading 28,553 words of my nonsensical prose. Thanks for sticking around!
See you around,
My first detour involved dipping south through Queens. My goal was to visit the 1964 World's Fair site at Flushing Meadows. Most of the pavilions have been removed from the site, and some of the land has been annexed to build structures like Shea Stadium (and now Citi Field) or Arthur Ashe Stadium and the rest of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, but a few really cool structures remain that make up the core of what is now Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
It was getting to be mid-afternoon, but since I'd skipped lunch I decided I needed to grab something to eat, and in my mind there was only one choice: Nathan's. I love hot dogs, and over the last few years I've grown all snobbish in that I almost exclusively eat all-beef hot dogs, and Nathan's brand are the cheapest ones I can find at my local store. Since I'm well aware that Nathan's started as a humble hot dog stand in Coney Island - they still host the world hot dog-eating competition there every July - I figured I'd make my way on down there.
