Thursday, 1 June

In SeaTac, I got up at 4:30-ish so I could get a short run in before we fly out. I was trying to do a 365-day running streak throughout 2006 and needed to get in at least 20 minutes. Then, we grabbed breakfast at Denny's, dropped off the car at the airport car park place, and caught the shuttle to the terminal. The first leg of our flight to Minneapolis left on time. This flight was on Northwest Airlines and they wereen't serving any food; unless you wanted to pay $1 for a small trail-mix type snack that they used to hand out for free. At least they hadn't started charging for water or soda or fruit juice.

We landed in Minneapolis ~2:00 pm local time, 3 flying hours later. We now had a 5-hour layover and we were not about to spend it sitting in the airport. After finding out what gate to go to for our Icelandair flight, we followed the signs to Minneapolis' light rail train station which stops at the airport. Let's see, we could go south to the Mall of America, or north to downtown Minneapolis. No brainer, definitely north. We're just not mall people. Maybe, some day, if we come through here again in the dead of winter and it's 0-degrees outside, we'd consider it, but not this day.

We used the automated kiosk to purchase 6-hour tickets and settled in for the 25-30 minute ride into town. The weather was gorgeous! Blue sky, a few puffy white clouds, about 80°F, and a light breeze. We got off at Nicollet Mall station. Now, in spite of the name, it's not a "mall" mall. It's a few blocks in downtown with plenty of shops and restaurants set in and among the taller buildings. We turned east and walked the few blocks to the Mississippi River. Way cool. I can now say I've seen the Mississippi River. Apparently, that's St. Paul on the other side of the river.

We turned back from the river and double-backed to the main section of the "Mall". There, we found a late lunch/early dinner in a local restaurant before we caught the train back to the airport. At first, I had thought this layover would drag out but instead it zoomed by. I wished we'd had time to get off and walk around Minnehaha Park. That looked very nice. Oh well.

Our Icelandair flight was supposed to leave at 7:20 but we didn't get away until 8:00 pm (local time). We were assured that we would still arrive in Reykjavik in plenty of time to catch any connecting flights.

Thurfriday 1-2 June 2006

This was the longest part of this trip, with 5.5-6 hours of flying time. In coach.

Bil had the aisle, I had the center seat. We read, I listened to Harry Potter on my mp3 player, occasionally glanced at the in-flight "entertainment", and tried to doze. At least Icelandair served a decent meal--by airplane food standards anyway. Somewhere at 40,000', I could see out the window to notice that the evening glow on the horizon never quite faded away. Thursday quietly became Friday.

Friday, 2 June 2006

On schedule, about 6:30 am local time, we touched down at Iceland's Keflavik airport. We'd be there again in a few days, but for now it was a brief one-hour layover. Through customs, I got what I've been wanting ever since I got my passport in 2002: a stamp from a non-North-American country. Yay! We found our next gate and barely 1/2 an hour later, we boarded for the flight to Stockholm, Sweden.

This flight was about the same length as Seattle to Minneapolis: 3 hours. But this flight wasn't full and as soon as they closed the cabin doors, Bil moved to the row in front of me and we each had a row to ourselves. Yes! And we got another decent Icelandair meal too. Having a row to ourselves, I think we each got a little bit of light dozing in as well.

Soon, we looked out our windows and there was Sweden, green below us, and then we were on the ground. Oh my gosh. "I'm in Sweden!" How cool is that? It was 1:00 pm, local time. It took about 18 hours from leaving Seattle to get here (flight-3 + layover-5 + flight-6 + layover-1 + flight-3).

We got our bags--they all arrived with us--and cashed in two of our traveler's cheques for Swedish Kronors (crowns). The exchange rate was ~7 SEK : $1US. Next, we found the booth to purchase tickets for the "Arlanda Express" train from the airport (Arlanda) into Stockholm (for 200 SEK each). Although not a bullet train, it does get up to 200 kph (or about 120 mph). The countryside was green and lovely. About 20 minutes later, we were pulling into the Central Terminal, T-Centralen.

It was a beautiful day: 70-72F, blue sky, puffy white clouds, a bit of a breeze. Nice.

Our hotel, the Sheraton Stockholm, was about 3 blocks away, and right across the street from the water. We got checked in and dumped our bags in the room. I needed to get my Friday run in for my 2006 streak, so I changed and headed back downstairs to the Concierge. She gave me a small map with a couple of recommended running routes. One was 5k (3.1 miles) in length and was basically an out-and-back along the water with a "lollipop" loop in a park at the far end. Perfect. Although I was tired, and a bit sleepy, the run felt good. On the way back, I stopped and dipped my fingers in the water: the Baltic Sea.

After a shower (*that* felt good), we headed back up the street (Vasagatan, the hotel is on the corner of Vasagatan and Tegelbacken) to the entrance to their subway, the Tunnelbana (the underground, the "T"), in order to go out to the 1912 Olympic Stadium for the marathon packet pick-up. After we paid our 20 SEK each, we set out to figure out where to go. Looking at the map, we correctly deduced that we wanted the "Stadion" stop and therefore, the red line. We took the escalator down to the platform and got on the next train that we thought was heading in the direction we wanted to go. But after we stopped at, and continued beyond, the Östermalmstorg stop, I realized that we were on the wrong train. This one was a spur line, terminating at Ropsten, off of the one we actually wanted, which terminated at Mörby centrum. Both were coded red. Oops. So we got off at the next station, crossed to the other side of the platform and caught the train back to Östermalmstorg. Jumped off this one, crossed back over again to the other side and this time we caught the correct train. Now, Stadion was only one stop away.

From here it was really easy: we just followed the large crowd of runners also there for packet pick-up. 17,200 runners had registered for the race. Packet pick-up was not in the stadium itself, but in an area adjacent to the stadium, called "Östermalms IP". Check-in was well organized and we each got our packet with no problems. I was number K769 (Kvinnor - woman/female) and Bil was 5083. Actually, we already knew our numbers since we looked them up on their website before leaving. But besides our number, the bibs also printed our names and had a small flag indicating our nationality. We wandered the expo for a few minutes but there wasn't really much there to catch our eye. So we walked back to the underground and since our ticket was good for an hour, we didn't have to pay again to get back.

We got off at the correct station, T-Centralen, but this was a big station and we ended up going out an exit that put us in a different location than from where we had entered the underground on our way out. Hmmmm... we started to head out a street that looked vaguely familiar when Bil looked up a cross street and saw a landmark: we passed a Running store on the way to the station and there it was. OK, now we had our our bearings. We got back to the hotel and dropped off our marathon bags.

By now, it was so time for dinner and we were quite hungry. We asked at the front desk for dinner recommendations and they recommended we take the 5-10 minute walk across the bridge into Gamla Stan ("old town") where we would have our pick from any number of restaurants. I was tired and sleepy but also very hungry. So, back out once again only this time we walked to Gamla Stan. We found a wonderful little restaurant, a tapas bar, and had a light, delicious meal. I was feeling so sleepy and groggy and thought I would fall asleep with my face in my plate!

We walked back to our hotel on tired legs and we both fell into bed just after 8:00 pm, even though sunset wan't until 9:51 pm! But the room had nice room-darkening curtains and we were out like the proverbial light.