I am so happy to come back to Stockholm after 19 years since last time I visited it. This great city left me a fantastic life-time memory. It is always the first major metropolitan in the world I really enjoyed in my life though Sweden wasn't in its best shape in financial crisis in 1992.
In the morning on 7/15, we didn't have the breakfast either at Crowne Plaza or at one of the restaurants nearby because we wanted to be on road as early as possible to start the longest drive in this trip. It is a very nice room with which I was satisfied.
The girl at front desk was very gentle, she might be a beautiful Northern African descendant. An African-Dutch came over to take care of my valet parking ticket while I was checking out at the reception desk in order not to delay our departure and he came back after several minutes to tell me the car was coming to the front of the entrance. The valet parking driver was a white senior gentleman who politely left the car for me to drive away. Amsterdam may be a very diversified city, at least, from the angel of my observation through this checkout process.
Stopping at the traffic lights to get out of the city center, I saw rain coming down but the tourists seemed not caring, they wanted to spend as much time as they could to enjoy. Some of them were heading to Central Station to take the train to leave as well.
It didn't take us very long to get onto freeway to Germany and nothing incurred abnormally other than driving on freeway in the rain. At one point of time, I sought an IKEA superstore at left-hand side of the road, as I shared, every dozens or a hundred kilometers, you can see one.
After getting into Germany, I happened to pay the attention to the radio channel I randomly selected and realized that it was playing very pleasant non-stop songs.
Before approaching Bremen in Germany, we started feeling hungry, so drove out of the freeway when seeing a road sign of Burger King. At home, we normally go to McDonalds but in this trip, we had found more Burger King restaurants, which might be a coincidence in terms of the timing when we felt hungry.
In the first place, I hadn't seen the restaurant after passing by the gas station, thought that it might be at the other side of the freeway.
After driving to the next section, I saw Burger King standing by the freeway closely. Slowly driving through the parking lot, I stopped the car to let a group of the family members crossover to their car. They waved their hands to us with big smiles on the faces. When we parked car, walked toward the restaurant, I noticed their car coming over with Swedish license plate. They probably had caught our license plate earlier when they were crossing.
It was a service center with several eateries in it. Since we are so familiar with its menu, we stuck with Burger King to order Big King and Whopper after waiting for quite a long time because of the long line. When the girl at the cashier asked me to select either Mayonnaise or Ketchup for fries, I hesitated for a sec, she laughed and said: "Ok, Both!" She seemed a pretty Turk. Many Turks reside in Germany as far as I learned.
Sitting at the table eating, I just found the service center was built across the freeway, so we could see the vehicle streams floating under the foot. This reminded me quite a few of fast food chains be built in this way on I-90 close to Chicago.
With the full stomachs, we left for the rest of the journey for the day.
We were supposed to take Route 162 to A7 to drive back to Scandinavia Peninsula but the route was closed. Following GPS instructions and the sign hung over Autobahn A1, we took Route 39 as an alternative.
Unfortunately, we were stuck again in Germany, and this time was on A7. It was bumper-to-bumper but at least, it didn't become a parking lot.
Fortunately, it didn't end up with a traffic collapse. We managed to drive through after 45 minutes.
Listening to the music on radio, I even sang with it.
Crossing over a bridge, we were impressed by the scenes of the river and the fields. It was sunny in this area,so we probably wouldn't need to worry about the rain in Odense.
Driving into Denmark, we were heading to Odense. The road was wide open. Approaching Odense, I stopped the car at a gas station to search the hotel on Expedia. I had planned to book at a hotel, which is just next to HC Andersens Hus, but it increased rate from 100 bucks in this morning to 130. After comparing with several others, I selected Best Western, which seemed 10 kilometers away from the museum but it must be at American standard with large rooms and its suburban location could make the whole facilities more comfortable.
I didn't follow GPS very well this time, so drove into a residential neighborhood at first. After re-routing, we arrived at a big conference center. However, we hadn't realized the hotel on the sign being referred to Best Western and hadn't seen the hotel located in a corner. Driving around this big center 360 degree on the surrounding road, we eventually caught it.
Checking in at the front desk, we had to have the lovely Dane changing the room from Double Bed to Twin. We exchanged jokes and my son said if he were with a girlfriend, he would have wanted cozier bed. Actually, this triggered us to recall our experience at Park Inn in Kastrup and shared the story with the girl that my son slept on the floor the first night and I did on the second. I actually never care about sharing a bed with others but my son is not able to sleep under that circumstance.
The restaurant was about to close in half an hour, we ran to it after putting the bags into the room. Waiting for several minutes, a guy walked out of another dining room to tell us that we could sit anywhere in the room we were standing in or we could sit outside if we wanted. I still think he was joking because at almost 9:00pm, it was pretty chilly and no one sat outside. My son did want to sit outside, however, this might irritate all the customers eating inside the room because the door would be kept open and the cold breeze was blown into the room. Later on, a gal had to close the door. I did remind my son that his request wasn't appropriate.
Anyway, the waiter was very gentle and nice when he explained the menu, and another elder waiter served us the BBQ quickly. My son ate all of his 4 pieces of large meat and 2 of mine. I drank 2 bottles of Carlsberg, the Danish pride.
The entire day had been almost all on the roads to going through almost 900 kilometers, though back in States, it is the pretty typical daily driving distance for me on road trips. We ended up staying a very comfortable hotel and would have very good sleeps.
Stopping at the traffic lights to get out of the city center, I saw rain coming down but the tourists seemed not caring, they wanted to spend as much time as they could to enjoy. Some of them were heading to Central Station to take the train to leave as well.
In the first place, I hadn't seen the restaurant after passing by the gas station, thought that it might be at the other side of the freeway.
It was a service center with several eateries in it. Since we are so familiar with its menu, we stuck with Burger King to order Big King and Whopper after waiting for quite a long time because of the long line. When the girl at the cashier asked me to select either Mayonnaise or Ketchup for fries, I hesitated for a sec, she laughed and said: "Ok, Both!" She seemed a pretty Turk. Many Turks reside in Germany as far as I learned.
Sitting at the table eating, I just found the service center was built across the freeway, so we could see the vehicle streams floating under the foot. This reminded me quite a few of fast food chains be built in this way on I-90 close to Chicago.
Checking in at the front desk, we had to have the lovely Dane changing the room from Double Bed to Twin. We exchanged jokes and my son said if he were with a girlfriend, he would have wanted cozier bed. Actually, this triggered us to recall our experience at Park Inn in Kastrup and shared the story with the girl that my son slept on the floor the first night and I did on the second. I actually never care about sharing a bed with others but my son is not able to sleep under that circumstance.
The restaurant was about to close in half an hour, we ran to it after putting the bags into the room. Waiting for several minutes, a guy walked out of another dining room to tell us that we could sit anywhere in the room we were standing in or we could sit outside if we wanted. I still think he was joking because at almost 9:00pm, it was pretty chilly and no one sat outside. My son did want to sit outside, however, this might irritate all the customers eating inside the room because the door would be kept open and the cold breeze was blown into the room. Later on, a gal had to close the door. I did remind my son that his request wasn't appropriate.
Anyway, the waiter was very gentle and nice when he explained the menu, and another elder waiter served us the BBQ quickly. My son ate all of his 4 pieces of large meat and 2 of mine. I drank 2 bottles of Carlsberg, the Danish pride.
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