Slog: The SAS Experience

Copenhagen, originally uploaded by xrrr.

Just come back from a short work trip to Copenhagen. Nice place, would like to go again for a weekend as I only managed a few hours walk around town with everything closed.

I flew with SAS, very pleasant experience - took literally 90 seconds to check in and drop my bag off at Heathrow (compared to 60 minute queue on my last trip to the US). Even security was fast. So I was sat in the departure lounge 15 minutes after stepping out of the taxi and that included queuing at the currency exchange place.

I had chosen a seat the night before via the SAS website so had managed to snaffle an exit row. I got chatting to the woman next to me who turned out to be a pro golfer who flies around Europe every Tuesday and plays golf Weds-Sat pretty much every week. Sounds a bit like hard work to me!

SAS have a great feature that showed the view from the cockpit on the LCD panels throughout the plane so you can see the runway. It then switches to a looking down shot once you take off. Very good.

To keep up the SAS Experience I stayed at the Radisson SAS Scandanavia hotel. Free broadband! What a fresh of breath air!

God Bless Free Internet, originally uploaded by xrrr.

I had time to have a few hours walking round town. I did not see much as it was about 20 mins to the city centre and everything was closed or closing. The Danish like to cycle. Apparently the Danish will cycle on average 3km every day of their life. That is a lot of peddling.

Copenhagen Parking, originally uploaded by xrrr.

I could not find a restaurant that appealed (McDonalds, Hard Rock Cafe, 'English Pub' were my options). I think that is because my American colleague had suggested where I look for food rather than Copenhagen is a chain store nightmare. So I ate back at the hotel. With nothing else to do I explored some of the features of my camera, took a few long exposures with the camera rather delicately balanced out of my 23rd floor window (it opened wide enough to get the camera out) it slipped off the window ledge a few times so it was a good job I had the strap securely wrapped round my neck!

I ended up with a few I liked:

Copenhagen by Night, originally uploaded by xrrr.

I had an early start and a 90 minute customer presentation to do the next morning so I was gutted that I did not have time to visit the Copenhagen Casino that was in the basement of my hotel. Maybe next time :-)

If you visit Copenhagen, make sure you buy a pipe. I would have but would not have had much use for it :-)