Copenhagen and travel to Manchester

Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen as the song goes. Well it truly is….. once you get there that is. This was to be our longest train journey but turned out to be much longer than either of us expected.

The Berlin to Copenhagen express limped into Hamburg railway station 90 minutes late with an electrical problem. The problem took another half an hour to fix so we were 2 hours late to start with.
Part of our journey involved crossing over the Baltic Sea by ferry. The train actually drives onto the ferry and then we all get out for the journey. The ferry has 4 levels. The bottom level is for trains and trucks, the next is for cars, the next has restaurants, shops, duty free and currency exchange and the top level has 2 lounge bars and outdoor seating and tables. We arrived at the ferry terminal just after one ferry had left so we had to wait for the next one.

We thoroughly enjoyed the ferry trip which was very smooth. It takes only 45 minutes before being loaded back onto the train and continuing our journey on Danish soil. By which time we were 2.5 hours late. As our train was to return to Berlin that day, someone had the bright idea of offloading the passengers 2 hours short of Copenhagen and transferring us onto a regional train. They also transported the passengers from Copenhagen by regional train to this station where they could board the express back to Berlin.

Two hours by express resulted in 2.75 hours on a regional train that stopped at every station. Our scheduled arrival at Copenhagen had been 1.45pm and we got there at 5.15pm, just in time to join rush hour travellers as we tried to locate the metro train to our hotel. We ended up having to stand but luckily it was only 3 stops.
Eventual arrival at the Copenhagen Hilton was magnificent and that was another day gone.
The following day we booked for a bus and river cruise of Copenhagen. We did the bus tour in the morning and saw some amazing places. The Little Mermaid, the symbol of Copenhagen as shown on all references to this city.

 

Princess Mary was not at home so we photographed her winter palace.

 

King Frederick’s Church has the third largest dome in Europe after St Peters in Rome and St Pauls in London..

 

After lunch we boarded the open topped boat just as it started to rain. Out came the ponchos and what was a great tour was made a bit miserable due to the weather. The temperature dropped too which didn’t help. We were so glad to get back on board the bus back to the railway station. At the station the rain had got heavy and there was a thunder storm just before we boarded our train. We sat for a little while and then there was an announcement in Danish which we didn’t understand and everyone started to get off the train. We found someone who spoke English and he said the railway overhead power lines had been struck by lightening and we would have to catch a later train. Eventually we got back to our hotel after a very interesting day.

The following morning, after an enjoyable breakfast, we arrived at the airport to catch our SAS flight to Manchester. We spent up in the duty free and sat waiting for our departure gate to come up on the board. It was apparently late and then suddenly came up CANCELLED. A rush to the inquiry desk to find out what was happening and we were told that we were all being moved to other flights. SAS only has one direct flight a day to Manchester. We were told we were flying SAS to Dublin and connecting with an Aer Lingus flight to Manchester arriving at 3pm instead of 9.30am. Our cases would be checked in right through. Annoying but at least we were going to be getting to Manchester that day. A phone call to Mum and Dad and the car hire company to let them know what was happening.

An uneventful trip to Dublin but more drama when we got there. We had arrived at Terminal 3 and our Aer Lingus flight was to depart from Terminal 2. We were carrying our duty free alcohol and customs told us that if we left Terminal 3, we wouldn’t be allowed to take our bottles onto the next plane as liquids over 100ml could not be carried. They suggested we contacted Aer Lingus to see if someone could come over from Terminal 2 to pick up the alcohol and take it through for us. We phoned Aer Lingus but they said they weren’t allowed to do this. Frustration. (Adele, Glenis, Kent – I now know how you felt).

A lady at the information counter offered a suggestion. As we were carrying 2 back packs, she suggested we loaded the alcohol into one of the bags and put it through as checked in baggage. When we got to the Aer Lingus check in, the lady there was great.  She helped us pack the bag and put it through without any charge. I was just hoping we had found sufficient packing to protect the bottles.

Manchester. Hooray! We had finally arrived. Our enthusiasm was soon curbed when we discovered that our bags hadn’t. The back pack with the bottles was there (still intact thankfully) but no cases. We weren’t the only ones. Others who had been re-routed with us from Copenhagen were missing bags also. There was a queue of people at the missing baggage counter so more time wasted waiting to be served and filling out forms. They said they would let us know when the bags had been found and deliver them to us.

We picked up the hire car (the people there were very good as the booking documentation was in my case). We have a Hyundai i30 diesel which seems quite a nice car. We drove straight away to Mum and Dad’s and had dinner there. We left about 8pm and called in to a supermarket to buy groceries before arrival at Jon’s house, where we are staying. It turns out our cases were located at Birmingham airport and were duly delivered this afternoon. We can now get stuck into the washing. Looking forward to a relaxing few days.