As of yesterday morning, Nicole and I thought we were going to Madrid on a direct flight from Los Angeles. Then that flight showed just five available seats. Then we looked into Paris, which has three daily nonstops from LA. Those, too, looked rather full. It wasn’t appealing to be sitting apart from each other in what would most likely be middle seats (if we got seats at all) for a 12 hour flight to Europe. We scrambled for other options. It came down to London, where we would have to deal with our old nemesis Heathrow, or we could take a Finnair flight with more than 200 open seats to Stockholm. There was a certain appeal to not having to deal with people and spread out on an Airbus A350. Our gate at LAX was the only one not full of people. While we often go on a trip in May, it is typically a bit lighter with travelers (even in the before-times). Summer travel appears to have started much earlier this year — either a result of pent up wanderlust or a looming summer surge in airfare prices or both. Either way, I don’t care for it. People are supposed to wait until at least June.
Somewhat surprisingly, the flight to Stockholm is actually shorter than Madrid or Paris by almost two hours. It flies more north over Greenland toward the pole you see. We weren’t expecting much for food as standby passengers in economy seats, and the meal service met our expectations. Like many airlines these days, one is not given a choice anymore, so hopefully everyone liked bland chicken and grilled vegetables with couscous and a Heath bar. At least we had a row to ourselves. Nicole remarked that it is perhaps the quietest flight she has ever been on. I think we were the only people talking at any point. The only other noise was a woman five rows back coughing up a lung for about ten minutes before passing out for the duration of the flight.
Shrewd observers might be thinking, “Wait . . . Finnair is Finnish. Why is it flying to Stockholm in Sweden?” And to that I have no answer. But Bricole will take what we can get. So if there were 200 open seats going direct to Belgrade or Chisinau, we would somehow make that work too. The reason we are going to Europe at all is in an attempt to do some form of Morocco/Portugal trip. Spain, logically would have fit in there geographically, but it was not to be. The trade off for a shorter flight to Stockholm will be a longer one to get down to Morocco, but such is the life of the nonrev traveler. We are excited to get a new country stamped in our passports. It will just inexplicably be Sweden. Usually we have some sort of backup option that we can at least tentatively plan on. Nicole has a document on her computer with locations and hotel names for every major city (and some minor ones) around the globe as if we are like spies in need of a safe house. Stockholm, however, was never really on the radar, so I booked our hotel about 10 seconds before the pilots applied takeoff thrust.
About 90 minutes before landing, we were served a fairly standard airline breakfast. The flight attendants were very insistent that everyone close their window shades throughout the middle portion of the flight. Due to our flight path to the far north, the sun never actually set, so those that wanted to make a vain attempt at sleep were allowed to do so. We, Bricole (everyone’s favorite celebrity couple), were unsuccessful in that endeavor – perhaps because it was the equivalent of 3pm in Los Angeles.
We touched down in Stockholm’s Arlanda International Airport just after 630am local time. The sun was beaming down though the air was a bit crisp. It took us maybe an hour to get from the airport to the city center due to the usual jetlag-induced train confusion. Given that we were quite early, they didn’t have any rooms ready for us, so we spent some time in the lobby area doing some research for our future travel plans.
passports & pepto bismol 