Officially done with and out of Spain
Trip Start
Aug 27, 2009
1
43
45
Trip End
Dec 21, 2009
Copenhagen, Zealand, Denmark
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Friday night all the people who were left got together and went out for one last drink at La Negra Flor. Despite it being the last night there, no one was really in a crazy mood. I don't think a single person was jumping out of their shoes with excitment to be leaving Spain. We're all obviously excited to see family and be home, but parting with it all was still tough. We've all got each others US numbers though, so if I ever want to take a roadtrip I've got a bed waiting for me in Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Texas.
I left the apartment for the last time at 7am with well over 100lb of luggage, My host mom took me to the train station, but you can't enter entirely with a car so it was quite the process lugging it. The heating on the train was broken, and it's about 20 degrees out so I ended up pulling out all of my sweatshirts and piling them on top of me anyways. By the end of the ride my toes were numb and I could see my breath. It wasn't fun. Got a taxi at the station since I didn't want to deal with 100lb of luggage on the metro. Spanish taxi drivers have a knack for ripping people off...especially if they detect that you're foreign so I went to the station information desk and asked how much a ride to terminal 1 usually costs. The lady told me it was almost always 20-25 euros. I went out to find a taxi, asked how much it would cost and was told "well usually 25 euro but since you have a lot of bags maybe 30-35euro". I lied and told him I only had 25 on me and started walking away until suddenly he remembered a "special offer!" for (hey, what do you know) 25 euros.
Needless to say, I was pretty thrilled to check my luggage in Madrid. Though I almost had a panic attack when the lady read my ticket wrong and told me my flight wasn't until Sunday. When our flight was delayed by over an hour I was starting to think maybe it was going to be the next day...but then we got boarded. Landed in Copenhagen without any problems, and put my two big bags in the luggage storage room.
Afterwards I got to try to figure out the Metro which was explained with a massive poster full of curvy colored lines. I decided that reading maps wasn't really my things, so I just kept asking random people where I should go at each stop. Got there with absolutely no problem...gotta love reliance on strangers. The only thing I was nervous about was finding the hotel since there were about 20 doors to exit the metro from...but I happened to pick the right one and it opened right across the street. Let's hope the luck keeps up all the way to Chicago.
Wrapped up the night with only a little walking around since it was dark already. Ate dinner at McDonalds because I hadn't had a real meal all day and it was the first thing I saw that looked edible. I sat next to a girl who was there for the global warming conference, from Guam. That was cool. Now I'm getting to bed early so I can get up early and see the city in the light a little before I have to go back to the airport.
