Flight Report: Hej då! Back to Seattle (via AMS and PDX)

Time in Sweden always goes quickly and this trip was no exception. I visited the people that I missed and wish that I had more time to see yet others who I just couldn't fit in, but it was time to head back to Seattle again. Swedish summer is light nearly all the time, even at 3:30am. I stayed with some friends in Solna in order to both see them one last time and also get to the airport on time for my early flight.

Stockholm Arlanda is a little bit inconveniently located well outside of the city. Stockholm was built as a hub and spoke transit system: All trains go to the center and you can get from there to anywhere. If you live on the "spoke" from central station to the airport, then it is not that bad, but if you are on a different spoke driving is your best option.

Once at the airport, you have to make your way past the departure sign and onward to the gates. Today's flight is still very early and is on a KLM 737 with classic livery. The ascent today was actually one of the more beautiful that I've had with great views of the lakes of the Stockholm/Mälardalen region.

Once in the air, a light breakfast and then to Amsterdam. I've found that the in flight snacks on KLM have been pretty good overall. This was an egg sandwich with tomato in dutch themed wrapper.

A brief pause here was all I had before my connecting flight on Delta to Portland. These longer flights generally have less to report on, simply because there is a whole lot of window shades down the entire flight. The best part of this flight though was about half way through when we were flying over Greenland. We had a clear, cloudless view of the land and ice below, including some fantastic fjords. Those are in the video just below; Check them out at the two minute mark!

On the downside, they messed up my in-flight meal this time around, but at least the standard meal was a curry. Curries are, in my opinion, one of the best in-flight meals you can get: They pack a flavor punch, which you need thanks to the altitude and cabin humidity, and they are pretty hard to mess up. The calzone, on the other hand was regrettable. Yuck.

All in all, a decent flight, but when will be the next time someone thinks my name is spelled like this? Hopefully not as long as I had to wait this time around...