I will travel wherever the deals take me: and this time, they bring us to Scandinavia (Aalborg, to be precise). I will be full of licorice. I will be poor. And I will eat fast food.
Where exactly is Aalborg? I barely looked before I booked. Have fun spotting it on this map of Denmark:
It’s a smol city in the northern part of Denmark, about 4 hours from Copenhagen by intercity train (a train I sit on now, as I write this post). I had to zoom aggressively to figure out where it was in relation to Copenhagen.
It was cheaper to fly here with a good stopover instead of most of the other cities in Scandinavia (we are NOT going to talk about how much more expensive Scandinavia is, though I saved $600 on the flight). Deals to France or the Netherlands never manifested after January, so here we are: just on the tail end of shoulder season, bopping around Norway and Denmark.
We have lots of trains, planes, and boats ahead of us the next two weeks (no busses, we have a History with buses, aka a Bus Curse, and we try to avoid them as often as possible). But first, we start with a hike to Joe and the Juice, which I have now become brand loyal to I guess, as it’s become my go-to pre-flight treat.
A Saturday night redeye to Amsterdam is pretty standard business, but I was looking forward to taking advantage of my New Smart Thing: Anticipating post-redeye stinkiness and exhaustion, months ago I had googled “places to take a shower in Amsterdam airport.” I ended up with a list of a few airport lounges and…an airside hotel?! Witchcraft.
Enter airside Yotel Schiphol: the real MVP of the travel day. It took us 5 minutes from our gate to get to the hotel, hidden behind the McDonald’s just above passport control. Being able to land and nap in between flights in a quiet space was definitely worth it if your layover is at least 4 hours (or more, if your next flight is not within Europe).
Let me tell you, these puppies are silent. If you’re going to pay for (or even enter on credit card benefits) a lounge pass to avoid the plebs, think again. Yotel is the bees knees.
The rooms are all spaceship-themed, with a cool bed that extends at the press of a button. They also had a small shower and a toilet that only I knew how to flush (Rhett could not figure it out and his mom accidentally hit the emergency call button).
I achieved exactly one REM cycle so I was alive and perky again. I performed my duty (flushing the toilet) and we headed out. Passport control was now a ghost town, since all the people from the American flights had all gone through to their next gates. (Suck it, plebs)
Our second flight to Aalborg was exactly an hour and we were served a delicious curry cheese sandwich because non-budget European airlines are far superior to American ones. The seats were even squishy and comfortable. Is this socialism?
This time of year, I guess Denmark is full of mustard fields, which are in delightful bloom as we landed in Aalborg.
And to the surprise of nobody, Aalborg airport is teeny-weenie, maybe 5 gates total. You deplane via stairs and have to walk into the terminal like it’s a private plane (if it was, I would have kicked off the coughing people. There were so many). Also, my Danish lessons in duolingo paid off, because I can read so many signs about trains that aren’t in English. Yessss.
I love these smaller towns and small airports. They are a better way to get a feel for the countries sometimes, as opposed to the melting pot of big metropolitan areas. Aalborg is situated on the banks of a fjord (I thought it was a river because I am a geography peasant) and has spent lots of effort revitalizing the waterfront. There are so many cool modern and contemporary buildings mixed in with traditional brick buildings.
The lady at the hotel desk was moderately offended that we weren’t spending more time in lovely Aalborg, and she gave us some cool things to check out on the waterfront for our jetlagged evening (hey I napped, I’m good!). She pointed us out to a street food hall about 40 minutes walk west. It was pleasant walking and I felt moderately wronged by the weather forecast, because it was way warmer than I had planned for.
The food hall was excellent! Lots of choices. I could have had tacos, but decided against it, because tacos in Europe are always depressing. I settled on some buns and gyoza. They didn’t have explicitly vegetarian buns but the lady made some up for me after I asked. They were v good.
Our long walk back was like the walk of death, because now we were full and slipping into food comas, and succumbing to a lack of sleep. At least it was Sunday evening and the streets were basically abandoned. I bought a bunch of random crap at a grocery store to use as lunch today and we hit the hay (after poorly doing my Danish lessons in Duolingo, I cannot abide disappointing the little owl).
The hotel had a killer breakfast, which is moderately unfortunate because I hate eating in the morning. But I had paid for this breakfast and we were about to train for hours, so I begrudgingly ate it, while complaining about having to eat breakfast. European breakfast is far superior to the sugar rush of most standard continental buffets and I will fight about this.
Today is a transit day – from Aalborg station to Copenhagen, and then onward to Oslo via overnight ferry.
The train station had a giant glob of young kids who were clearly headed Somewhere on a school trip. School kids in Europe don’t get out until mid-June, so we’re just before this. But I forgot that kids go on trips for school and I hoped that these children were not in our car. They were not, thankfully. I have narrowly escaped chaos that cannot even be blocked out by noise-cancelling headphones.
Next stop, Copenhagen, and then Oslo!
