The other benefit was seeing the new (and newly launched)
Queen Mary
which was in town, for just a few
hours. But alas, she was not visible from our hotel, so we
had no chance to see her. But the driver took care of that.
Today's travel involved a noon flight from Bergen to Copenhagen, then a 3:50PM flight from there to Seattle. At least all these segments would be daylight flights, so we have the chance to see what we missed on the way over.
The other benefit was seeing the new (and newly launched)
Queen Mary
which was in town, for just a few
hours. But alas, she was not visible from our hotel, so we
had no chance to see her. But the driver took care of that.
Both this and the above photo were taken as the bus drove along
the freeway, so the quality's not all that great.
We boarded our flight and headed off to Copenhagen, a little late, but not any cause for concern. Barbara was also good enough to give us a parting gift.
I was fortunate enough to be on the good side of the plane.
Good, that is, in having a view of where we stayed and explored
so much in Copenhagen. I have also
created a map image
with the landmarks indicated. It's also rather large, so may
take a while to download.
Then it was a case of hanging around Copenhagen Airport for 2.5 hours to wait for our flight to Seattle. Curiously, the flight flew over Bergen, so after a couple of hours of flying today, we were back where we started!
Not that we could see much of anything. Firstly we were sitting in the middle seats of the Airbus (it's a 2-4-2 seating arrangement), so the view out the window was very limited. Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, there was fairly consistent cloud cover!
Nearing the coast of Greenland, we could see
icebergs!
Real, honest to goodness icebergs!
And remember, these are from over 30,000 feet (10,000m),
so they must be quite large to be so easily visible.
And that's a glacier down there, flowing left to right.
The Airbus has a camera that points down, and its image is
available on the TV screen in the back of the seats. This is
the view as we crossed Greenland.
More glaciers, and a dirty window on the plane. That was not the
only complaint with this particular plane - we froze the whole 9+ hours
of the return flight - jackets on and blankets were the order
of the day.
The head of these glaciers.
The passenger's eye view of the seats. The back of the seat has
some interesting additional ideas, including more storage spaces,
and a fold down drink/glass/can holder, separate from the tray.
But the seat was not very comfortable.
And then the clouds returned, and we didn't see much more of Greenland or Canada. The clouds thinned as we approached Seattle, and it was nice to see familiar territory again. Although there were rain drops appearing on the nose camera in the plane, so we hadn't entirely left the rain behind!
After clearing Customs and Immigration, it was time to head on home, and do all those chores which mount up during an extended absence. Like washing... But it was dry, and warm - nice for a change!
But it was a terrific trip, with excellent company, and for me, new countries and places. I'd go again - maybe not tomorrow, but soon, that's for sure.
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