I woke up at 4:00am in London, finished packing, and was out the door with Matthew, my travel partner-in-crime on this trip (he's from Vancouver, lives 2 doors down from me at Bankside) by 4:30. Because it was so early the Tube was not running, so we had a nice 40 minute walk to the national rail station, where we caught a 5:25am train that made it to Stansted Airport at 6:10. We had already checked in online, and had no bags to check, so we just went through security (which in some ways is much easier here, in others is a total pain... they require you to only have 1 hand bag, which means I had bags packed within bags. My computer, of course, was within a bag within my big bag, and they needed me to lay it out... took forever!). Past security we hopped a tram to our gate, and then got on the plane where I got my window seat, Matthew took the aisle, and nobody sat between us so we had plenty of room for coats and bags, etc.
The flight was good - got in about 10 minutes early, and was only in the air for about 1 hour and 20 minutes (about the same as O'Hare to Dulles). It was pretty crazy taking off from London at 7:30am and it still being absolutely pitch black, but once we were up in the air the sun came up in a hurry. The weather in Copenhagen is about 5-10 degrees colder than in London (low 40s), but today it was cloudy without any precipitation, so at least it was dry.
We got off the plane, and instantly we were greeted by COP15 volunteers welcoming us, handing out maps, and answering questions... it was a really friendly service and I was quite impressed. Then as we headed to immigration, we had our own private line for the COP15 delegates. The Star Alliance lounge was converted into a COP15 lounge. There were banners all over the airport... seriously, it was pretty incredible.
After some issues getting our metro tickets (turns out you can't use a credit card without a PIN anywhere in this city... lucky for me, I have my Bank of America debit card/ATM card, and also my UK HSBC debit card, so I should be fine, but yeah, definitely a bit of a pain!), we hopped on the super-fast, super-clean, and supper-efficient metro into the center of the city. Only 15 minutes and about $3 later, we got off at our stop, and it was a 2 minute walk to the hostel, which we found almost immediately. We got a locker, dropped off our bags, and walked all across the town! We found a delicious pizza place that was unlike anything I had ever had before. The pizza was Sicilian/square in shape, with a thick crust, but really light tomato sauce and a unique cheese that I had never tasted. Really delicious! After that we walked down the Stroget, which is the longest pedestrian-only street in Europe, towards this large public square that was showing an exhibition of artwork that was essentially a series of pictures of 100 cities under threat of a 2 degree C temperature rise, including, go figure: Copenhagen, London, and Chicago. The picture of Chicago was fabulous... from an airplane, at night, over downtown, you can imagine! London was an aerial shot as well. The Copenhagen picture was of the Nyhavn canal area, which was gorgeous... I encourage you to click on the link and take a look at some of those pictures. Even if you weren't aware this was in Copenhagen, I'll bet most of you have seen an image like that before (I know I had).
From the Nyhavn we turned around towards the Danish Parliament. I know, you're expecting another gorgeous Capitol Building, something grand like Westminster or Vienna or Paris, right? Wrong. This was without a doubt the most disappointing part of the day... there were literally no signs regarding the fact that the building we were walking by was indeed Parliament, and amazingly, somehow, we walked right in without so much as seeing a single police officer or tourism official or anything. We walked clear through to the other side, with no welcome sign or anything really. We were so shocked we had to look it up on my phone just to make sure the building we had just walked through was indeed Parliament, and it was! Copenhagen is a city with a ton of pride, but they sure don't exhibit that through the Parliament of Denmark.
Anyway despite that disappointment, we trekked on, and came across another environmental display within a few minutes that was a polar bear ice sculpture, coupled with pictures of polar bears in the wild in Canada, Alaska, Norway, Greenland (Denmark), and Russia. Past that we returned back to the hostel, switched up some of our paperwork, and then went back to the Metro, over to the Bella Center, where the COP15 is, and we got our official delegate badges! Don't worry, I have taken pictures, and will post them as soon as I can. What is nice is that with our badge we can travel on the public transportation now for free, so cheers to that! After some photos in the lobby area we headed back, grabbed dinner at some local sandwich place that was kind of like a cross between Subway and Quiznos, which was pretty good. We stopped at a convenience store on our way back and viola, here we are!
I have a ton of emails and whatnot to get caught up on, so I'm going to end this post here, but please do pay attention to the G-1 Billion website in the event that I don't have time to post more here in the upcoming days.
Speaking of which, my latest article was published this morning:
There should be one more either later today or tomorrow.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Pretty much sums it all up quite nicely! (:
ReplyDeleteHope you feel better and best of luck with the rest of your stay in Copenhagen!
Love,
Sarah.