Great trip over to Sweden, I was able to take the airporter bus to SFO, got through TSA quickly, found my gate and grabbed some lunch from the Dolores Park Café. After that I did some stretching in the yoga room then checked out the sensory room which is something I have not seen before. It’s a space specifically tailored for neurodivergent folks to give them a quieter airport experience and had a variety of calming elements and a mock plane interior. Later I found a nice comfortable lounge chair, and relaxed and read until my flight.
All three of my flights were fully booked, but I did better than I thought I would. The first flight was to Detroit, which was four hours. Despite it taking place over the dinner hour all we got were snacks. There was an option to purchase overpriced sandwiches and snack food but I’ve decided against that. I was impressed with their safety features video. Since Delta has been in service for 100 years they had crew members dressed up in uniforms from each decade, and the actors were also dressed in period attire – it was great seeing the 80s aerobics wear!. I watched a touching and beautifully shot Italian movie called Vermiglio. There was the cutest Frenchie on the plane.
I had to basically run to get to my connecting flight which left only 40 minutes after my other flight arrived, and I had to get from gate A2 to A64 in the Detroit airport. I found out when I got to the gate that there is an airport train that I could’ve taken (I would’ve appreciated that information being on the Delta app). Oh well at least I got my steps in! The next leg to Amsterdam was 6 1/2 hours. On that flight, we were served dinner and VERY hot waffles for breakfast. I watched Freaky Tales, a movie set in Oakland in 1987, that brought back many memories of clothes, music, stores, etc. It was a lot gorier than the movies I usually watch, but at least it was the bad guys getting hurt. I wasn’t tired, so I decided to watch a couple of classics, The Joy Luck Club and National Treasure. National Treasure is a family favorite dating back to when we took the kids to New Zealand in 2004, it was playing on the airplane, the kids absolutely loved it and I did too. We watched it several times at home over the years. It has not lost its appeal. I had an almost 4 hour layover in Amsterdam before the final one hour flight to Gothenburg. I managed to nap a little bit, but they didn’t have any comfortable chairs or quiet places to relax, and the airport was hopping. I guess that’s to be expected during the summertime. Even though the flight was only an hour long, KLM did serve sandwiches so that was good. I went through passport control in Amsterdam so did not need to do so when I got to Gothenburg. I got off the plane, picked up my bag, which was one of the first ones out and almost immediately saw the kiosk to purchase my bus ticket to get to town. I walked outside the door and the bus was there loading up – easy peezy! The airport is about a half an hour outside of the city and it’s literally surrounded by forest – very very different from what you see at SFO, or really any airport in the US. It was a very pretty drive into Gothenburg.
I found my way from the bus station to the B&B I was staying at, half my walk was through a beautiful park in the city center. Once I got settled in, I headed out for a look around and to find something for dinner. At that point it was 8 PM but still very light outside. I found a beautiful church, more parks and an art museum with a statue of Poseidon out front. By the time I got around to looking for a place to eat, most had stopped serving food, so I went to a local grocery store and bought soup, cheese, crackers, and some pepparkakor (ginger snaps), one of my favorite Swedish foods. Everything was in Swedish so I couldn’t read the labels. I wasn’t 100% sure what the cheese was going to be like or the crackers for that matter. The soup I could tell was a red curry, though I wasn’t sure what other ingredients were in it, but part of the adventure of going to another country is trying different foods. I got back to my room and put together my dinner. The soup was absolutely delicious, really flavorful, and paired well with the crackers and cheese that were milder. It was still very light outside at 10 PM, but I finally got into bed after 11 hoping I would have a good night sleep.
