Andre and Wendy: Sweden, Norway and Denmark

An uneventful trip to Halifax to catch our plane to Copenhagen. We jumped on WestJet announcing a direct flight from Halifax to Copenhagen, only for them to cancel this flight a couple of weeks after we had booked it. We are now flying from Halifax to Toronto, then Toronto to Copenhagen.

Our first of 3 mishaps so far today, we get off the bus at Halifax Airport and Andre takes a woman's suitcase instead of his own. She caught it right away. We had a bit of a laugh because this woman once did the same thing leaving the airport and didn't figure it out until she got home with the wrong suitcase.

Next mishap is we decided to check our carry on bag. We received an email last night that our flight was full and they would be looking to check carry on bags for free. Since we were arriving in Copenhagen so early at 7AM we were not in any rush to get to our hotel, and checking the bag meant we didn't have to drag the bags all over the airport in Toronto. Halifax let us check it in there which was great, it is nice not lugging around a suitcase. Halifax you now have to put your luggage on a belt yourself, well my luggage tag got stuck in the belt which caused a malfunction and my bag to get stuck. Maintenance called and they had to get the belt going backwards, it broke my little cute cat luggage tag and it is now stuck in the belt forever in Halifax. I asked at the desk for a luggage name tag to put on my bag, no such thing any more!

In Toronto we found our gate number on the board with a little bus beside it. Yep, we had to take a bus to our gate in the infield, it has been many many years since I have done this. They couldn't print our boarding passes for this flight in Halifax, so they gave us boarding passes here, no electronic check in via your phone for this SAS flight. Only 1 emergency exit seat open on this flight, so I am 2 rows behind Andre in the Aisle, 99% of the time I am middle, so it was a nice change to have aisle. Not much sleep had, but it was a good flight.

We are staying in Malmo Sweden for our first 4 nights here. Copenhagen is have a big running race this weekend which draws 75,000 people so we are staying a 30 minute train ride away directly across the river from Copenhagen in Malmo. I bought the tickets for the train online, only to find out when they came around to scan the ticket on the train that I had bought the wrong tickets. The man wasn't the most friendly, but he let us get away with it, I think it was the same price anyway. The train goes part way below the water and part way above, it is not cheap, to take a car over is very expensive.

Got to the hotel easily. Looks like a place we will like, from the 1300's. We arrive at about 8:30 so of course our room isn't ready. We spend some time in the library room organizing what we want to take with us for the day and what we will leave behind in their storage room. They have coffee/tea and cookies out to help yourself.

We spend the day exploring on our own. Lots of walking. Some nice architecture. Lots of apartments here that are quite new, but some old streets mixed in to make it interesting.

At 1PM we are signed up for a free walking tour. We visit a lot of the places we visited this morning but here more of the history. Our guide is originally from Peru but has lived here for 10 years now. She tells us it is much less expensive to live here in Malmo than in Copenhagen, but wages are better in Copenhagen, so many people live here and work in Copenhagen.

Back to the hotel after an ice cream break and get checked in. We decide we really need a 1 hour nap, we could have slept much longer but know that would be a bad idea for sleeping later tonight. Our plans tonight are to go out to dinner for Swedish meatballs to a place that our guide recommended.

So far we are liking Malmo. A flat city of about 350,000 that has lots of little canals that we may take a tour on one day. It is very flat, lots of bikes and scooters that you need to keep your eyes open for, but there are lots of bike lanes too.

Supper tonight we went to a food court that we actually thought we were at for lunch, not sure how we got that mixed up. The food court was like we have seen in many cities, a huge hall with many different little restaurants to choose from. We both had different types of Raman noodles, both were delicious. We will probably be back here another night, a couple of places we would have liked to try, but tomorrow night it will be Swedish meatballs.

Walking home in the dark was pretty. Lots of the old buildings lit up. It is a bit of a strange city, the Germans did not bomb here at all during the war, but it is a real mixture of new and old buildings, like we have seen in cities that were hit in WWII.

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