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...

Flight Reports: Seattle to Sweden [SEA to ARN via PDX and AMS]

I love flying. There really is nothing like it and even with all of the hassle today, where else could you get a shot like this? Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier lined up, as seen from the my seat on a wind up Q400, is not something that you can get anywhere else. I recently got back from Sweden, where I spent a week and a half with family and friends from my studies there at KTH. It was a fantastic trip (and more on that soon), but the flights ended up being treats in themselves: Mountains! Greenland at predawn on the way there! Crisp views of the fjords of Greenland on the way back! The lakes of Stockholm in early morning light! All that is in this report.

My first leg was between Seattle and Portland on Horizon (SEA to PDX). I had two connections on this trip because that was the least expensive option and because I have only been through PDX once before. I wanted to see the airport and not have to connect through an airport on the east coast. On my past flights heading south, I've made the mistake of sitting on the left side of the aircraft (DEF seats), but this time I purposefully chose to sit on the right. If you are flying out of Seattle and headed South (California and Portland), sitting in seat A will almost always give you a view of the mountains on the way.

Portland itself is a nice little airport. Their airport code PDX has become something of a trendy name for the entire city. Getting to and from the airport without a car is made easy by the fact that the light rail comes adjacent to the airport itself. That would today be seen as a security risk in the post 9/11 world. The red line was "lucky" enough to have been designed and built before then, with service opening the day before 9/11. In contrast, the Link Light Rail in Seattle requires people to walk an extra quarter mile to get to the trains.

Next flight was on Delta to Amsterdam. An A330 with a window seat and a very odd ball guy beside me for the start. He ran a motorcycle repair shop, had been in an accident four days prior, broke his hip, had it replaced, and was now sitting in the seat next to me. Thankfully, the flight wasn't full and he ended up sitting in the center row. It was a good flight overall and I managed to capture most of it using my still being perfected flight lapse technique.

The flight was reasonable enough, although I forgot to order a special meal. Our flight path took us by the southern tip of Greenland, which is what you see above. Oh, and I surpassed 400,000 documented flown miles with this flight. Once in Amsterdam, it was a quick hop left to Stockholm on a KLM flight. I like KLM. They're cute. Lufthansa is serious, SAS has a streak of Nordic egalitarianism, and KLM is windmills and blue clogs cute. 

On this flight too, I got a great flight lapse, although I did get a stern, "What is that on my window?" when the flight attendant saw my contraption for holding the camera. Still, once he figured it out, he thought it was pretty cool. Thanks random KLM guy for not trying to shut me down (like on the Portland flights).

And with that, I stepped back into my summer dream, as if waking up as my Swedish self who never left and returning to the city as if two years had never past.

Flight Report: Seattle to Milwaukee

Two weekends ago, I found myself in Milwaukee for the weekend. I was there to visit my girlfriend's family, with a bonus side trip to Chicago for the night. If you've never been to Milwaukee (and unless you have family or business there, the odds are pretty low), the city itself is actually a lot better than the stereotypes you might imagine. It's not all about Miller time, the Brewers, and Fonzie.

Actually, I take that back. It is all about the Brewers, there is a bronze Fonzie statue that is one of the top rated tourist attractions, and one of the highlights of Milwaukee, for better or worse, is the bar scene. Life there is different compared with the West Coast and my native Seattle. If the dream of the '90s is alive in Portland (thank you Portlandia), then the dreams of Americana is alive in Milwaukee.

My first flight was fairly uneventful. It was a night flight, so no pictures to share, but we were upgraded to first on Delta to Minneapolis. Once on the ground there, we were welcomes by not one, but two mechanical delays involving our MD-90. The first one actually went out of service and we were given a new plane, but that one had issues as well. Personally, I don't like the McDonald-Douglas planes, at least not since I was a kid flying on the MD-80s. In those early years, I would look forward to boarding the plane via the rear stairs.

Once on board, we were finally ready to go. The first time, they actually boarded us and then had us deplane once they figured out that the plane wasn't going anywhere. Sitting there gave me plenty of time to consider the skymall catalog and wonder about the people who buy this stuff.

Carlashes?! This is a real thing that people make money on?! It's completely ridiculous, as is the Mall of America, pictured below. That's one of the largest malls in the United States, complete with indoor amusement park.

Finally on the ground in Milwaukee, a full three hours after we were supposed to be there. Because we were so late, we needed to grab a bite to eat which made Gillies our first stop for some frozen custard. Finally the trip is starting to turn around!

Next time, we'll take a look around Milwaukee's "finest" dining, some fantastic places in Chicago, and then head on back to Seattle.