The Planning
The start of a much anticipated week of holiday in which I planned to hit as many geocaches as I possibly could, but in a memorable setting and including some actual tourist things. Oh yes! Ami and me were off to Denmark.
When I first started thinking about it, I couldn’t decide where to go. I was toying with driving to The Netherlands for some much advertised big series of adventure labs. When I sat and thought about it, I hatched a different plan. It occured to me that I had a bunch of British Airways reward miles left, which meant I could fly somewhere essentially free.
In fact, I had enough air miles for two flights, and my chosen week coincided with older child coming back from university. She’s always up for a free holiday, so she joined me. From my perspective it wasn’t going to cost me extra in hotels, so Ami coming with me just neant double to food and train fares, but not a lot else. I was happy with that if it meant having someone to share a few walks.
So the plan was cast in stone, and the booking were made. And today was the first day of that.
Still in Britain
Clearly, the first part of our trip was made whilst still in Britain. We had a mid-afternoon flight from Heathrow, so we set off just after lunchtime. The drive down was not troublesome apart from roadworks around Luton, so we were at Heathrow in good time. We’ve taken to using the “Meet and Greet” parking, for the simple reasons that it’s right by the terminal building and it’s not much more expensive than all the offsite places. It makes it much quicker to get in and out.
We were sufficiently early that they wouldn’t let us do a bag drop, so we grabbed a coffee and pastry in the departures hall to pass the time. When they were ready to check us in, it was quick and simple.
After a short trip through security we were still flush for time. Our flight was showing a 30-minute delay and they still hadn’t announced which gate we were on. So we settled down for a bit of a wait. We decided a chunk of time could be filled at Wagamama.
Where’s Our Plane?
All seemed still reasonable until we reached the point where they’d normally start boarding. They still hadn’t published which gate, so I fairly quickly concluded that the 30 minute delay was going to be longer.
It turned out to be much longer. At the time we were supposed to leave (the 30 minutes late) the inbound plane hadn’t arrived. Not that there were any announcements about is or updates on the scoreboard. Eventually we found an information desk and asked them. They confirmed they didn’t really know, but it would “probably” be gate A27, so we decided to go mooch around there for a while.
A plane came in and parked at that stand eventually, and this is when they finally announced it was our plane. Having just pulled up though, it was clearly going to take them another hour to turn it around. Our 4 pm flight actually left well after 6 pm. It was packed to the gunwhales, but at least we were on it.
One highlight – there are sets of adventure labs at Heathrow Airport, and both had geofences big enough to allow them to be completed from inside the T5 building. Might as well push the caching forwards while the chance was there.
Here we are
We eventually landed at Copenhagen Airport not long before 9pm local time. Exit from the airport was quick but because I hadn’t researched, and didn’t realise, I thought we should take a taxi to our hotel. It was all of 4 minutes away and the driver didn’t really get a good deal out of us.
Copenhagen Airport also has two sets of Adventure Labs and a virtual cache that can be done from the baggage hall. Cha-ching. Rack ’em up!
I’d booked a room at the Best Western Plus Airport. I’d mucked about with various hotels but concluded all the ones in the city centre were either bad, or too expensive. So I decided to take a punt on the metro trip to the centre being quick. More of that tomorrow.
Anyway, the room was functional. Not spectacular, but big enough, and warm. The beds were decent too.
Neither of us was mega hungry. Right next door was the Cafe Le Perr, so we grabbed something quick. Just as well. We only had 45 minutes before they closed.
