EU 2013 - London

After a completely uneventful flight to London on Ryanair, we actually had a bus work out, this time from Stansted to London Liverpool. There are a couple bus options and the Stansted Express train but we thought it would be nice to see outside instead of being in a train for an hour. Plus that the bus had wifi, even if it was a bit mediocre.

First stop was to meet up with some work people for drinks. Great views from the Madison roof bar. Next day was the Wimbledon Mens semifinals. Great 5-hour match between Djokovic and del Potro to start then Andy Murray beating Janowicz in the 2nd. We had left before the end of the Murray match after he was clearly going to win and we had been in our seats for almost 8 hours with only a couple breaks. Very entertaining and a great Wimbledon experience!

St John Bakery near Maltby St

Started the next morning at the Maltby Street Market which has a great variety of food being chased by what appeared to be a significant number of American foodies. It does not suffer due to this at all. Very good and interesting snacks, sandwiches, and other options at stalls on a very narrow street named Ropewalk off of Maltby. Very fresh, very nice people, and a great time in the sun. As a twofer on Saturday markets, you can walk 25 min to Borough Market for their retail (also Thursday and Friday) but I was pretty full at this point and Borough is more of a zoo. Spent the afternoon wandering around while Adrienne went shopping, hitting the Tate Modern and the Paul Smith Sale Shop then heading to Victoria Park for a walk and to visit a couple pubs. Found the beer garden on the park closed for a wedding but enjoyed a few pints at The Hemmingway and The Lauriston in South Hackney. There was some excellent looking pizza at the latter of those two so might have to head back at some point.

For dinner, met one of Adrienne's friends for dinner at St John. Very disappointing, partly because the food was only sort of interesting outside of the desserts this night but also because the server was generally unfamiliar with the dishes and was very rushed despite the restaurant being only half full. Maybe they're losing their touch here. At any rate, not in a hurry to return. St John Bread and Water was great on a previous trip and the bakery near Maltby St was awesome, so it's not all their properties, but maybe the main one could use some attention.

Woke up the next day to find our United Airlines flight canceled and rebooked for two days later. Ostensibly due to the Asiana crash at SFO except that all five other UA, BA, and VS LHR-SFO flights went out that day. Only ours was canceled. Just great. Called UA's UK number and found a very helpful person who tried a number of options but could only slightly help us get back to SFO two days later.

The Eagle - Clerkenwell

With two days to fill, extended our stay with points at the Hyatt Anadaz Liverpool St, which was an excellent, newly-renovated hotel. Great location, very helpful staff, and really an enjoyable stay. So happy to use points here as they seem to run £320+ per night. Used our extra Sunday to have a fantastic lunch at The Eagle in Clerkenwell followed by watching the Wimbledon Mens final at the Slaughtered Lamb and dinner at The Well.  Normal day working from our London offices on Monday with a good dinner at Dishoom in Shoreditch

Headed to LHR in our second attempt to leave on Tuesday morning to find ourselves 59 minutes before our flight. United has a hard cut 60 min before but they did some radio work and got our bags on. Made it to our Boeing 787 Dreamliner to IAH without an issue and everything seemed fine until about the time the doors would close and we would be on our way. Three hours and multiple pilot comments about computer issues with the plane later we were all offloaded and told to wait for future updates in the lounge. This did not sound encouraging and I had called UA earlier to be backed up on a flight the next day as we would be missing our connection in IAH. They said the luggage would be offloaded so we asked to have ours sent to the baggage claim. Got a hotel from UA due to the delay and missed connection and went to the LHR Hilton for the night. UA eventually canceled this flight 6 hours after the scheduled departure time, leading about 150 people in line at Terminal 4 to deal with rooms and rebookings. So two flights cancelled, three days delayed, and have not yet seen compensation from UA. Probably flying BA or VS next time.

London travel basics: $1.50 = £1 at the time of this trip. Vodafone SIM from one of their shops in Kensington. With a Freedom Freebee, £10 gives 100 min of UK calling, 300 UK txts, and 50 Mb of internet. When you top up with a normal £10 (or higher) voucher in the future, it reloads this. Very helpful and extremely useful when calling the United Airlines UK number in multiple attempts to rebook.

Additional photos at flickr

EU 2013 - Brittany

Sometimes when you want to get from point A to point B, you have constraints. These normally might be cost or availability but Brittany is a little more like Lake Bohinj in Slovenia where there is no nearby airport and you need a combination of planes, buses, and perhaps other options and it sucks up a full day of travel. Our itinerary:

- CPH-TXL (Berlin) SAS. Using UA miles to get to Paris. 30 min flight. 14:15-15:10

- 2h 40m layover at TXL. Bizarre airport in that there is no real "airside". At least for intra-Schengen flights there's an exit door right next to baggage claim. Terminal A is open to anyone off the street to enter, including shops, restaurants, and the LH Senator lounge if you have the correct ticket and status. Walked outside to get from terminal to terminal then back through security. Not sure anyone checked my passport prior to the TXL-CDG flight.

- TXL-CDG LH. 17:20-19:05 Nice flight. Normal LH selection of cheese or ham sandwich. Had a Warsteiner. Still generally like LH. So far so good.

- Air France bus to Gare Montparnasse via Gare du Lyon. 2 hour bus ride due to Sunday evening Paris traffic. 40 min spent winding around the CDG terminals from 1 to 3. 30 min into the ride, while sitting in traffic, someone asks the drive to turn off the AC. Queue an hour of roasting and near nausea.

- Roughly 12 hours after leaving our CPH hotel, we arrive at our Paris hotel. Could have taken a taxi or RER or really anything other than the bus to get there.

- Around 7 hours of sleep, which is pretty good. Get up to take a 3h train to St Malo.

- All told, 11am left CPH hotel on Sunday, arrive 14:00 Monday at La Villefromoy St Malo.

A fairly quick but very nice trip to visit St Malo, St Briac, Cancale, and meet up with Adrienne's family in St Brieuc.  Mixed weather with some sun and some rain. Not particularly warm. Fantastic meal at Restaurant l'Atelier in St Malo. Other meals were kind of mixed with shellfish and wine in Cancale being pretty good but fairly touristy and somewhat expensive and a couple restaurants in St Malo being expensive and not particularly good, but we were somewhat limited by our desire to eat later in the night, say after 9pm.

Hiking along the coast in Cancale was a highlight with great views of the water on one side and interesting houses on the other. The variance of the waterline due to tides is something else to look at, where boats are on the seabed at one point then the water returns a few hours later.

Much easier to leave the area with a €20 taxi ride to the Dinard airport for our Ryanair flight to London Stansted. Easy jet is a bit prickly about baggage weight but we planned perfectly and were right at the limits so no issues. They really jam a lot of seats into the plane and this one was surprisingly completely full. I suppose when you only have two or three flights a day from an airport that will happen.

Brittany travel basics: $1.30 for €1 at the time of our trip. Would have been much easier to fly to Dinard through London instead of our CPH-TXL-PAR-St. Malo trek. 3G cell and data again, this time from an Orange SIM ordered on eBay and activated by sending a passport scan to Orange at

blois.contrats@orange.com with the phone number. Created an account online at orange.fr as well to track progress as activation takes a couple days. 50Mb of internet for €2 per day for data activated through a menu system by dialing #123# and searching through the menus for Options then Internet. A bit tedious using their system of replies but worked out and 50Mb was fine for maps and email.

Additional photos at flickr.

EU 2013 - Copenhagen/Malmö

Nyhavn

Arrived in Copenhagen on a fairly cold (12 C) and wet day in late June. The cold and occasional rain would continue for the four days of our trip which was not too bad but left us thinking that maybe we should have gone to Italy or Croatia or somewhere with at least better weather than San Francisco. Still a good time to wander around though.

Stayed at the Axel Hotel Guldsmeden near the central station. Nice hotel, great staff, great spa in the basement, very funky bathroom setup. For restaurants, like Fiskebaren for seafood, Mother for Italian (both a little west of the station and near the hotel), a nice fixed menu at Manfred's, and a good bagel with lox one morning at the Bagel Shoppen. The only meal I thought was a little overrated was lunch at Aamanns where the smørebrod was ok but not so great given the prices. Late night food is pretty much limited to shawarma and really good hot dogs (pølse) which tend to be easier to find around Tivoli and the central station area.

Mikkeller Bar

Great beer at both Mikkeller Bar in Vesterbro and Mikkeller and Friends in Nørrebro. 20 taps at the former and 40 at the latter. Likely the best beer on tap anywhere in Europe at this point in time. Finished the trip with good cocktails at the Barking Dog in Nørrebro. Liked the touch of coco puff-like cereal to top their white russians.

Lila Torg

Took a day trip to Malmö, Sweden via train from the central station. Was about $25 per person round trip and 30 min each way. Was a very rainy and cold day but we still had a nice lunch on Lila Torg (the cute small square in town) at La Grappa and did some window shopping in town. Malmö is a bit odd in that most of the town seemed to close down at 16:00 on Saturday and not open at all on Sunday. Outside of a few bars and restaurants we saw, unsure what people do. Maybe they all have nice cottages they go to and hang out on the beach. I hope it's something along those lines.

CPH travel basics: $1 = 5.69 DKK during our trip. Flew United Airlines SFO-LHR and SAS LHR-CPH. United was fine. SAS left a lot to be desired as they block the first 15 rows or so for their Gold flyers. So on this flight there were about 5 people in the first 15 and 50 of us jammed in to the last 10. Kind of uncomfortable but only 1h 20m in the air so not too bad. Did like SAS showing takeoff from the nose camera and the flight from the belly camera on the dropdown monitors.

It was very easy to get a 3G SIM at the Telia store at Copenhagen Central Station for my unlocked iPhone 4. DKK 29 for a Telia Talk SIM and DKK 49 for unlimited internet for a week. $13 well spent to have Google Maps, Yelp, and other apps available wherever and whenever, and nice to be able to make a couple calls as needed.

Additional photos at flickr