The wheels on the train go round and round or not

We decided to leave the window open for our last night (7/29/08) in Stockholm. We thought we felt a cool breeze around 10:00 PM and tried putting the fan in front of the window to cool us off. We forgot however that the sun rises very early, 4:00 AM, and we were awakened by a nice and sunny room.

Our travel today took us from Stockholm to Copenhagen. We had booked the high speed train for about $35.00 per person, 1st class with high speed internet to boot.

We managed the metro system like travel pro’s and got to the train station in plenty of time for a Swedish McDonald’s. We have figured out that open faced sandwiches are the main stay of the people here for breakfast and such. Even McDonald’s sells the sandwiches for breakfast.

We boarded our train and were speeding along. We stopped at a stop and didn’t start moving again. I guess our high speed train isn’t high speed after all. From what Jim understood and what we asked about our trains doors broke down and we were delayed about 1 ½ hours. Lucky we had no connection to make and the trains from Malmo to Copenhagen run every 20 minutes or so.

I have to say train travel is pretty nice. First class has plenty of leg room for Jim and me. We can walk around all we want if we can find our balance. We have a table between us and we just hooked up our computer and got caught up on our emails, bills and blog. Not too bad. I guess the drawback is when the train breaks down. But it really isn’t any different that being stuck on a runway. At least we get to get up and visit the dining car. The scenery has been beautiful. Leaving Stockholm we were surrounded by trees and forests. We have now encountered more of the drier area where there are less of the pine trees. We chose train travel for this reason alone. We wanted to see as much of the countryside as we could instead of hopping on a plane. Plus the price was too good to pass up.

Once we got to Malmo we finally found the train to take us to Copenhagen. It was really crowded. For some reason 1st class sits higher on the train than 2nd class. Well if we had known that we had to climb stairs with our suitcases I would have given my 1st class seats up in a heartbeat. We finally found our seats and were waiting to leave when an announcement came on saying this train was cancelled and we needed to move to another train on another track. By now I am pretty grumpy and sick of train travel. I made the decision to forego our 1st class seats and sit in 2nd class where we don’t need to climb any stairs.

A taxi brought us to our hotel. Our air conditioned room is unavailable but a “lovely room that faces the street with open windows” is available. We took it only to discover that there is no smoking “in” the hotel but they all stand outside smoking which is right below our window. So all the smoke has been drifting up to our room. We are changing rooms tomorrow. PLUS there is no self-service laundry like they advertised and also contacted them about. To them self service means you put all your dirty clothes in a bag and take it to them and they ship it out. Each piece costs around $5-10.00. I don’t think so. We found a self service laundry about 3 miles away so we will make a trip there this weekend. Of course I got so mad that I threw all my tops in the bathtub with some body soap and started scrubbing. Now I hope they dry!

Today is one of those days that really didn’t go too well. Tomorrow will be a new day when we get to discover the joys of Copenhagen. Print this post