DAY 1 & 2 - THE ADVENTURE STARTS TODAY... DENMARK HERE WE COME.... 24 &25th April 2022.

 The day has finally arrived.  I haven't been too game to get too excited until now as every plan we have made in the last couple of years has changed.  One thing the pandemic has taught me is that life can change rather suddenly and any plans you make need to change suddenly also.  So as not to feel disappointed, I try not to allow myself to get excited about anything so that I don't get too disappointed.

We have spent the last couple of nights at Chloe's  so it was nice to wake up this morning to a pretty relaxed start to the day.  Normally when we are leaving to go somewhere, we have a huge list of jobs to do but not today.  Other than the final few things to pack into our suitcase, labels to out on our luggage, we were done.

Sarah and the children came to visit around lunch time and then Dan and Chloe dropped us out to the airport around 4.45pm.

 

Transiting through the airport was pretty seemless.  Checking in opened at 5pm so we only had about 5 minutes to wait until we could check in and get rid of our luggage.  We were fairly close to the front of the queue with only about 20 other groups ahead of us .  As we had checked in online the previous evening we were able to proceed to a faster line.  It was much quicker to get through and it was here that we had to show our vaccine passports.  

 

Once our luggage was checked it we could then head downstairs to the border control area and show our passports to head out of the country...  We also had to go through a full security here.  Things have changed somewhat since we last left the country and this time we didn't need to take out laptops out of their bags.

The whole process from checking in to border control took just over 20 minutes.  This is the fastest we have ever been when checking in to go overseas..

We now have 3 hours to kill until we need to board our flight.  We couldn't get over how deserted the the departure lounges were, and there were very little in the way of being able to grab some food for dinner before boarding our flight.  Most places were closed and in the end the only place we could find open was a Bar and Grill.  They didn't have a great variety of food and we didn't feel like burgers so in the end we just ordered some nacho's to share...

Dinner at the airport..

In Australia we still have to wear masks when transiting in the airport and on flights, so this is definitely something I am not looking forward to.  I have been wearing the mask now for three hours and I don't find them comfortable, so not looking forward to wearing it for another 27 hours...

Pete and Maria rang whilst we were having our dinner and we are now getting extremely excited about seeing them.  We will be with them in 24 hours time.  A bit surreal after not being able to see them for the past three years...

After dinner, we had a toilet break, visited an airport store and I bought a book about Keith Urban to read on my flight.  Once we had done this, we were then ready to make our way down to the boarding gate.  Before we did that though, we rang family to say goodbye before we took off...

With that all done, we decided to head down to Gate 73 which was where we were boarding our flight from.  It was a very long walk down to the Gate, but we didn't care, because by now we were super excited just to be getting on a plane again...

There was some interesting artifacts on the way down to our boarding Gate and of course I had to photograph them.

 

One of the things that surprised us on our way down to our flight was just how empty the airport was.  We are used to being in a very bustling airport when we fly, normally there are people everywhere, but this was a very different experience this time round...

Once we got to Gate 73 we only had about 20 minutes before we were called to board our flight. 

Our flight to Dubai

Our flight QF8431 was flying on an Emirates flight and our seat numbers were 72F & 73G in Zone D.  Our seats were in the centre rows of the plane towards the front and middle of the plane.  It was a pretty good spot as you missed the bumpiness and turbulence that you experience when right at the back.

Considering how full the flight was, the boarding process was fast and smooth, and we were actually taxing down the runway at 9pm as planned.  

We are finally on board - ready to take off... a long awaited visit to family on the other side of the world. 

The first two hours of the flight went quickly as the air hostesses settled everyone and bought around a clean face mask and a small tube of hand sanitizer.  No longer do they hand out the little pack of socks, eye mask, toothbrushes and toothpaste.  This has gone by the way since covid.  Also where once we would get a printed menu for our trip this was missing also this time round...  We were still issued though with a small pillow and blanket for the trip.

When I first hop on the plane I like to check out the statistics of the plane and check out the flight path, and then I come back to it on and off through out the flight to see the progress..

About two hours into our flight, we were issued with our first meal.  It seemed a little late to be having a full blown meal, around midnight...  It seemed to be a bigger meal than I remembered from flying internationally, and I couldn't possibly eat it all.

Our meal on the first leg of the flight...

Once our meal was over, I watched a movie, and then took one of the sleeping tablets prescribed by my GP and tried to catch a few hours sleep.  I did manage to sleep for a few hours, but it was broken sleep as I keep waking every hour or so, but did somehow manage to fall back to sleep again.  I probably managed to do this for five to six hours of the flight.

Breakfast was quite an enjoyable meal

After waking, I watched another movie and then it wasn't long before we were served a breakfast meal, which was a little more enjoyable.  Once we had eaten it was only another couple of hours before we were due to land in Dubai.  The serving and eating of meals really does help to make the time fly by when flying.

Once breakfast was over, I was happy to watch the last part of this leg of the journey on the monitor in front of me.  They obviously have cameras on the underside of the plane as we were able to watch as we touched down on the airstrip in Dubai.  What a nice feeling it was to touch down.  This means that the worse leg of the journey was done and dusted.

Touch down in Dubai

We arrived in Dubai around 5.30am Dubai time and had around 3 hours until we were to fly the last leg of our journey to Copenhagen.

Three hours goes pretty quickly when you have to transition from the arrival gate through security and then find your new departure gate for the next leg  of your flight..  It also seemed that we weren't the only flight arriving into Dubai at that time, as the lines of folk trying to get through security were long and we had to que for quite a while.  By the time we did all these, we had very little time left before it was time to board again for the last leg of your flight to Copenhagen.

It was a bit of a walk to our Departure gate through lots of shops but we were fast running out of time before we would be due to board again, so we just stopped for a few photos and then headed straight to our departure gate...

Transitioning through Dubai International Airport..

It is a very elaborate airport..

We missed the opportunity of getting a photo of our aircraft in Brisbane last night as it was quite dark when we boarded it, so we weren't missing the opportunity this morning of taking a photo of our aircraft we were flying in to Copenhagen.

The aircraft we flew in to Copenhagen

Once again we where seated in the middle rows of the plane just behind Business Class.   In fact to board we had to walk through business class which was a little hard to take seeing how much more comfortable their seats where to the packed in seats we had in economy section.

Seated for the second leg of our journey to Copenhagen

On the first leg we had gone through all the movies and  saved our favourites.  You have a vast number of movies to choose from and I think Steve and I both had 30 odd movies on our list and they were just from the recent release list.  We had photographed them off our screen on the first leg of our journey so that we wouldn't have to go through and make a new list on the next leg of our flight.  There was no way we were going to manage to see them all anyone.  At best we would only manage a couple of movies thi flight...

 

Just a few of the movies on our lists..

We are so thankful for our BOSE headphones.  They come in very handy when travelling, not only to listen to movies giving us great sound, but also for sleeping as they have noise cancellation.  These were a gift to ourselves last time we flew over to visit Pete and Maria and although expensive, definitely worth every cent we paid for them..

 

We love our BOSE Headphones..

 Our flight times had us arriving in Copenhagen an hour before we were scheduled.  I seem to remember last time we flew a similiar thing happened so we were a little concerned that Pete wouldn't be at the airport to meet us.  Still we figured that it would probably take us a good hour to get our luggage, go through border control and get out into the main airport.

 

We settled into watching our movies, I think we were both too excited to sleep on this leg of the flight.  Once again once we were in the air and the seatbelt signs were turned off, the air hostess got busy preparing our next meal for us.   This is usually served about two hours into the flight.

This leg of the flight is only six hours.  We are getting beyond excited.  Not long to go now until we get to see family...

About twenty minutes before landing, we packed up our headphones and the rest of our belongings, so that we could just following the Today's Flight on our screens and enjoy the last little leg of our flight into Copenhagen. The dream has become a reality, not long now until touch down, we are starting to see the Copenhagen below on the aircraft cameras and the excitement i very real...  A week or two ago it was hard to believe that this day would eventuate and now we were only minutes away from landing in beautiful Denmark and an hour or so away from being reunited with our first born.  We are beyond excited to see Pete again and see Maria and Theo again and meet our newest grandson.

Copenhagen in sight...

Almost there..

The tarmac is in sight..

Coming in for the land...

 

Finally touched down...   We are in Denmark....

Wow Wow Wow, we are finally here and the weather is gorgeous.  This is the first time we have landed here where the weather has been sunny and perfect.  Both previous visits, it has been raining as we land.

It didn't take too long to get everyone off the plane.  We almost have to pinch ourselves to believe that we have finally arrived.  Now for the long haul to Border Control, to have our passports stamped.

We have arrived...

It didn't take us long to realize that Denmark has completely relaxed all their covid restrictions and masks are no longer required in their airports or in Denmark itself for that matter, so it didn't take us too long to get rid of the dreadful face mask that we had previously worn for the past 30 odd hours...

Mask free at last..

Once our passports had been stamped and we had been asked our reason for visiting Denmark, it was off to see if we could locate our baggage.  There is always the worry that you may arrive somewhere and your baggage doesn't but we need not have worried as it was one of the first off the conveyor belt.  With this all secured it was time to go through customs.  This is a seemless process in Denmark, unlike Australia as there is not much that can't be bought into Denmark.  Nothing to declare so it was straight through out into the waiting section of the airport.  We did not expect to see Pete yet as we were here a good half hour before our scheduled arrival time but you can imagine our surprise when we saw him as we walked out...

Cuddles and hug all round after three years. 

The joy and tears were very real all round.  This is the longest we have ever been apart without seeing each other and suddenly we were all together again.  Pete had come out to the airport early hoping to grab a bit of lunch before we arrived.  We were so so surprised and thankful to see him.  It was just a surreal feeling to think we were finally together.  It has been a hard three years not knowing when we might see him again and now we were here all together,

We gave Pete a bit of time to go find something to eat, before heading off to find our rental car.  It turns out that since we were last in the airport here, the rental cars have all moved from the Terminal and now are located a couple of kilometres down the road.  Appartently there is a bus you could catch, but as we had so much luggage which would have been a pain to try and lug up onto a bus, and also as we had been seated for such a long time on the plane, we decided to walk to the rental cars.

The walk was good.  The air a little fresh, so we needed to find our coats before heading off...

There has been a lot of work happening at the airport here since we were last here.  Lots of expansion and lots of new buildings.  It was almost unrecognizable outside of the terminals.

The walk to the Car Rental seemed to take forever, it was much longer than we first anticipated but we finally made it.  We were pleasantly surprised when we arrived to find out that our car had been upgraded to an MG and it was pretty new, having done less than 1000 kilometres.  The other exciting feature was that we had a sun roof.  It was also a hybrid car, so both electric and fuel operated so we were warned that when we started the engine, you wouldn't actually be able to hear the car as it was pretty silent.  Hertz have been pretty good to deal with, the only downer was that there was no real hand over with the car,  we were given a set of keys and told where to find it.  It would have been nice if a Hertz representative could have come to the car with us, and step us through the operations of the car.  Maybe this is something we need to put on their feedback form for the future.  

Our hire car in Denmark

A sunroof...  we loved this...

Back at Pete's place..

Initially we had trouble setting up the navigation system and we weren't able to use our phones with google maps as we had no internet access in Denmark at this stage.  Fortunately Pete was with us and we were able to use google maps on his phone...

Steve was a little nervous driving as you drive on the right hand side of the road, and as we had just stepped off our flight and had to drive through peak hour Copenhagen traffic it was all a little daunting for him.  Once we were out of the city and more into the country, he was able to settle down a little more..

We had a 40 minute drive ahead of us to Pete's place.  Along the way we were discussing how we would sneak up and surprise the children.  We were also wondering how shy they would be around us having not really met us before.  Theo was only 7 months old last time we had seen him, so we were pretty sure he would have no recollection of time spent with us when he was that age.  Fortunately we do speak to them over face-time at least 3 to 4 times a week so they are familiar with us...

None of plans went to plan as when we arrived Maria and the children were at the neighbours and saw us arrive.  We needn't have been worried as the moment the children saw us they came bounding down the footpath and literally jumped into our arms.  Tears all around again for us.  We did not quite expect such an enthusiastic welcome from them but were so thankful and of coursed overwhelmed with love for them both.  So so blessed.. 

We were pretty excited to finally be at Pete and Maria's and after a grand tour of their new home, we set about to unpack our suitcases.  We had cupboard space to store our clothes, so it really did feel like coming home.  The children were our constant companions.  After we were unpacked, Steve and Pete went to the store to buy us a decent pillow each.  European pillows have no substance and it feels like laying on a flat bed when you sleep with one of theirs.

Whilst Pete cooked us a special welcome dinner, I sat with the children to watch some TV.  This is a ritual for them.  It helps keep them occupied and happy whilst dinner is being cooked, so I joined them on the lounge...

Elliot lasted for a little while but it wasn't long before he wanted to get down and just do his own thing...  He is quite happy to wander about and amuse himself.  He is such a happy placid little boy and a joy to have around...

I have a new pillow..

Once tea was over,  I was able to help Pete bath the boys and get them ready for bed, and Steve helped Maria to clean up from dinner and pack the dishwasher...

We were feeling pretty exhausted by now, so it was an early night for us with us crawling into bed not long after the boys went to bed.  Two days into our holiday.  The plan for most of this week is to just chill out at Pete and Maria's as we are on babysitting duties whilst Maria finishes her last week at her old job, and Pete works.  And so our time in Denmark finally begins...