Day 1: In the happiest nation of the world

So 31st july finally came, the day we were eagerly waiting for. At 9 PM, accompanied by 2 of our faithful backpacks loaded with a lot of enthusiasm, amidst torrential rains we flew to Delhi to start our epic journey to the nordic Europe. At delhi it was a night catching up with cousin and friends over some JD and wine till 2:30 AM and then a few hours nap, before heading to terminal 3 to catch our Finn Air flight to Copenhagen via Helsinki. My newly acquired priority pass came in handy giving us exquisite lounge access at almost all airports. Takes away a lot of stress for sure.

Our flight to Helsinki was at 10:30 AM indian time and we were supposed to land in vantaa international airport Helsinki at 3:20 PM. The connecting flight was supposed to start boarding at 4:05 PM. So that gives us a 40 minutes window to clear security check, passport control (As we are arriving from a non Schengen country) and reach the designated gate for boarding. Having travelled extensively, i understand this is pretty tight as european airports gets pretty crowded during summers and the queues are at times quiet long. With some good inputs on flight by Finn Air’s literature i found out that we don’t need to change terminal and Terminal 2 where we will land is pretty average in size. So we rushed out on landing, breezed through security and after spending some time in the passport control queue did make it to Gate 31E at 4:00 PM. Pat on our back.

Now the drama unfolds. Gate 31E seems to be swarming with passengers. Apparently Our flight AY699 was tremendously overbooked and chaos was all around with quiet a lot of people waiting on standby list. What amazed me, was with the amount of ease with which airlines ground staff were dealing with the passengers and the level of patience and regard with which passengers were cooperating with the airlines staff. Ground staff announced for volunteers  who are ready to take a flight an hour and half later, as some passengers on standby were in dire need of taking this overbooked flight to meet their schedule. Also a 125 Euro in cash was offered to anyone showing any compassion. Ya Ya, you guessed it all. My hand went up immediately. We were not in a hurry anyways to reach Copenhagen. It so happened that they just needed 1 extra volunteer and i was the man. It was a win win as both me and Pritha wanted some time on our own to check out the airports, so happily we parted ways after a vote of thanks from the Finnish lady who could take my seat on the flight. Pritha to Copenhagen and me waiting at Helsinki on the next flight. i was given a new boarding pass and a prepaid visa card with 125 Euros loaded on it. Helsinki airport has free wi fi, thanks to Air bnb’s android app, we are always connected to the owners via messenger and hence could let our host know that we will be late. 

I arrived Copenhagen at 6:30 PM to be reunited by Pritha, who in the meantime collected enough maps and tourist info to take us through. Unfortunately due to a lot of delayed flights the belts were clogged and almost took an hour before we got our luggage. So we were finally Happy, in the happiest nation in the world.

At Kastrup Airport

On our way in the Metro

 From Copenhagen Airport Kastrup, we have to take the metro and get off at 'Kongens Nytorv' station. This was pretty simple as tickets can be purchased with Automated counters  which accepts credit cards too. This was of great help because somehow the ATM at the airport wasn't accepting any of my 3 debit cards. The price for a 2 zone ticket was 24 DKK per person.

Our host gave an amazing description of how to reach the house and we made it around 8:30 PM after around 800m of walk in beautiful weather.

The apartment is on 5th floor and is a typical danish attic studio, tastefully designed. As there were no other guests we had the entire apartment to ourselves. Morten, our host was a very friendly person. He gave us all the briefs on the house and the security. We had full access to kitchen and pantry loaded with enough grocery to make our own breakfast and dinner. So we almost have everything that we needed.

The Bedroom 

The living room

The Kitchen

Around 9PM we decided to go on a leisure walk just to get our coordinates straight. Our location was fantastic, just in the heart of the city. Everything was walkable. We found this hot dog cart serving yummy hot dogs rolled in bacon (40 DKK) which was our dinner for the night followed by some amazing waffles (28 DKK). It was friday night and the gorgeous danish teenagers and everyone else were gearing up for partying. We found out this lane next to the canal in Nyhavn, which is the place to be to start the night. You can buy your beers and pizzas and sit next to the canal and have it, if you don't want to sit in the restaurants which dots the length of the canal. 

So after a long and heartening walk and broad smiles on our face we retired in our cosy beds for a well deserved sleep.