Patrick's Diary - 7/15/2015

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. 

Patrick's Diary - 7/14/2015

I started writing early morning yesterday but didn't finish. Now, it's 1:34 am on Saturday morning in Stockholm.

It's 4:28 am on Friday morning in Malmo now. Coming back from Lilla Torg after such a wonderful dinner, I fell into sleep quickly until half an hour ago. Being the most gathering place during summer nights in Malmo, Lilla Torg is always amazing!

In the morning on 14th, we got up pretty late. The plan was to visit Tilburg University, then drive to Amsterdam to stay over night, though at that point of time, I hadn't booked hotel. Before checking out at Auberge Du Bonheur, I took a last glance at its beautiful surroundings. 

Since University is within walking distance, we planned to walk there and then came back to drive the car. However, we first went to a wrong direction, then rain poured down. So, we had to run back to our car. My son kept complaining that I made the wrong decision. 

It only took us within five minutes to arrive at the campus. Since the rain was even harsher, we parked it along a road by the campus sitting in it to wait. I did see several people walking by without umbrellas but we had been soaked and I didn't want my son to get cold during the trip. He is easier than me to get sick due to lack of trainings. After 20 minutes, the rain became drizzle, we started walking around the campus.

After just 5 minutes, the heavy rain came back again and we had to hide under a cover of a building. I took a moment to film the fountain in the center of the campus. Standing there, we saw a lady coming out of the building to talk to us in a language I didn't catch in the first place, it might be Dutch. When I responded in English, she smiled and got back into the building. I didn't catch what she meant at the end, asked us if we wanted to get in? She might not speak English. She looked like an Asian and might not work in academic areas, or I assume that she must speak very fluent English at this University. She is a very nice lady and seemed trying to help us. 

The rain almost stopped again, we found out the building of School of Economics and Management. It is a secured building and we don't know anyone here. My purpose is to give my son a general idea about the school, see if he is interested in coming here to enroll the study abroad program for a semester if he is accepted by the Department of Economics at UW in his Junior Year. I give all options to him but the final decision has to be made by himself. Up to now, he probably has been so comfortable with his lifestyle that he may not want to leave the dorm at UW forever. As far as I learned, Tilburg University owns a very successful economic program. It will be beneficial for his future if he can come to study as an exchanged student. Of course, there are so many great programs all over the world, but this is the best option on the list of Study Abroad Programs for my son. 

While walking back to our car, I saw a Starbucks logo pasted on a window of a building, American cultures seem having some influences here.

Driving out of the campus, we were ready to have lunch. I checked on Yelp to find out the recommended restaurants but eventually drove to the city center to park in the garage under a shopping mall, then randomly picked a cafe around the area. 

My son always has a great appetite especially we had had late lunch or dinner almost everyday during this trip, so he requested the big meal. The waitress is a typical Dutch girl and recommended the burger and promised serving a big pile of fries. Because of driving, I couldn't drink Dutch beer but enjoyed my sandwich as well. At one point of time during the lunch, she asked us in mandarin: "好吃吗？(Taste good?)" I was so surprised because her pronunciation was perfect, I caught it in the first place without any problem. Then, she told me she worked at an Asian restaurant nearby in the past, so learned it from there. 

Tilburg is a very attractive city and the University is a very neat one. The rains bothered us a little bit of visitings but it might be brought by us from Seattle. However, my dad told me on the phone several times that it hadn't rained back home since we left for this trip.

Back onto the freeway, we were heading to Amsterdam. I hadn't booked the hotel but planned to do it when we were close to the city. I wanted to show my son Red Light District, which I viewed as an unique culture. Of course, Amsterdam has many attractions: Dam Square is one of the most visited ones. 

Probably only 50 kilometers were left, I stopped the car to search on Expedia mobile app and eventually selected Crowne Plaza, which is several minutes of walking distance away from Dam Square. Getting into the city, I encountered a little bit of issues to find the hotel. However, driving through all those extremely narrow streets is never a problem for me. I experienced this type of difficult drivings in downtown areas of big cities for more than ten years. After making a U-turn at an intersection due to road construction, I parked the car in front of the hotel and immediately figured out its advantageous location. My son seemed happy with this hotel because he asked me to take a photo for him right after we got out of the car of which would be taken care of by hotel staff for valet parking. 

A tall lady checked us in quickly and a senior gentleman took care of our car politely. After entering our room, I figured it wasn't a waster of paying 250 bucks for it in the heart of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, especially I booked it close to the last minute. 

We walked out on the road to Dam Square after taking a short break. Noticing a bunch of popular restaurants along the road, I planned that we might have an early lunch at one of them before we would leave the day after. 

A street artist was performing on Dam Square, which had hundreds tourists forming a circle to watch. We joined the crowds for several minutes and were impressed by his jokes and actions. 

Walking along the street to pick a restaurant to have our late dinner, I caught a Chinese one. As I had shared, we'd never eaten at a Chinese restaurant when traveling abroad except in China and Canada because of the concern of authenticity. However, due to the popularity of overseas traveling amongst Chinese from Mainland China, I had presumed the Chinese restaurants in big diversified cities such as Amsterdam must feed Chinese very well. After passing by that restaurant twice back and forth, we decided to try it. 

The girl for seat arrangement standing at 2nd floor spoke in Dutch to us first, after I asked her if she spoke Mandarin, she responded: "中文啦!(Chinese, ok)". The dining room on 2nd floor was packed and I hadn't realized that two other customers following us until that girl asked if we could sit at a big round table together. We actually were fine with it as long as we could eat as soon as possible. After coordinating with someone, she told us that we could sit separately on 3rd floor. At that moment, a group of tourists were walking downstairs, so it might be a good timing for us that they left the room for us. 

The waitress was a middle aged gentle Chinese woman, she briefly asked us and the young couple who followed us to come up where we wanted to sit, a small table for two or the big round table. I said we could take that big table because I presumed that young couple must like a small one to chat more privately to face to face. We ordered the heavy Chinese stuff because this is a Szuchuan restaurant. It ended up with a very authentic Chinese dinner.

Over the course of this delicious dinner, we chatted with that young couple from time to time. The man first asked us if we came from mainland China because he could tell my typical Beijing dialect. After he heard that we came from Seattle, he was probably a little bit surprised. They came from UK because they study at University of Manchester. The man is majoring business and the woman fashion design. They were probably in break, so took a trip to visit Germany, France and Netherlands.

After such a wonderful dinner, my son wanted to go back to hotel to sleep. It didn't matter for me to go to Red Light District either because I am an old man whose interest of beautiful young girls has already gone. While walking back to the hotel, my son made the comments about Americans' more focused concern and Europeans', I don't know where his perception comes from, his point was that Americans more care about the issues of sex but Europeans violences. He might learn it from his Psychology or Philosophy classes or online search. At least, he knows his future wife will kick his ass if he goes there, but I told him as long as he doesn't deal with prostitution, she shouldn't be mad and he can bring her to go together. A lot of women go to Red Light District as well.

Appreciating the sunset by the river, we were so impressed by this beautiful city...

Patrick's Diary - 7/13/2015

We arrived in Malmo several hours ago, I am glad to come back to Sweden. My son has become a very typical American kid who wants to go back home to enjoy American life. So, tonight, I will walk out of hotel to have several draft beers and glasses of wine myself at Lilla Torg myself. It is 7:16 pm on 7/16/2015, wow, I have been behind on writing my diary for almost 3 days. 

In the morning on 7/13, I walked on the street in that small suburban town of Hamburg when my son was still in sleep. Not having caught the name of the town, I asked two teens I encountered, one of them told me what it is. Coming back to Myappartment Hotel, I noticed an Opel dealership was across the street.

Checking out of the hotel, I chatted with the receptionist for several minutes. He mentioned it took him one hour and a half to come back town from the beach yesterday generally taking only half an hour because of the traffic jam on freeway. His answer to my question about the traffic collapse on Autobahn yesterday proved my assumption that it was driven by heavy construction work because the workers had to do it in summer to avoid the extreme cold weather in winter. By the way, before checking out, we had a very well prepared breakfast in its neat small restaurant. Not only the taste was great but the color of the foods was beautiful as well.

We drove across the street to Esso gas station to get 57 euros back. Unfortunately, the gal who said to me that she would come at 10:00 am didn't show. Another younger gal totally didn't know what I was talking about. After exchanging with another senior man, she asked me to come back at 2:00 pm to talk to their owner who might show then. It's impossible for us to wait until then for 57 euros because we needed to go to Tilburg. A young man came in to buy stuff who spoke very fluent English tried to help. At the beginning, we had miscommunicated as well, but after several minutes, he caught that I prepaid but never pumped any gas yesterday. In States, I almost always use my credit card to pump gas but only paid in cash at the counter no more than 10 times in the past 18 years. The practice is to pay in front with the total estimated gallons, then pump. You can experience it at Arco, which only accepts Debit Card at the Pump. This is why I made the mistake yesterday. The young man was so nice to try to convince the staff at Esso to reimburse the money to me but they didn't. At the end, I left my personal information to them in case if they could figure out and resolve it. I told them that I would come back after two days but knew we might not. Watching me to write my address on a form, that younger lady said to me that her father living in LA because she noticed we are from Washington State. Anyway, I pumped the gas at the end by paying extra money. 

Leaving this small town for Netherlands, we didn't encounter bad traffic today. We seemed to reach our destination without any problem. Learning the lesson from losing 100 bucks, I didn't book the hotel in Tilburg. 

Passing Bremen, we were heading to Amsterdam. At one point on A1, we switched onto E-30 by following GPS instruction. It started raining pretty harshly then. 

Driving another hour or two, we entered Netherlands without paying the toll though I had seen a sign earlier but didn't find out how possible we could pay it. GPS told us to drive on A1 for 60 miles. 

It probably was another hour left to Tilburg, so I stopped the car to park on the shoulder to book the hotel through Mobile App on Expedia. Though losing 100 bucks to that hotel, I still considered it the best option for us, so booked for tonight at it. The landscaping along the road was so beautiful just like Van Gogh's painting. The rain just dropped from time to time, it actually brought us a sort of artistic conception. 

It took us several extra minutes to locate the hotel in Tilburg but we eventually arrived at it after two days. The surrounding was so quiet and peaceful, I don't blame myself to book it two nights in row so stubbornly. 

We didn't have lunch, so were pretty hungry. However, it was only 4:30 pm then. The waitress asked us to come back at 6:00 pm if we really wanted a more formal dinner. Taking a nap, we actually came back at 6:30 pm.

Ordering a glass of wine, I started studying the menu. The same waitress introduced the varieties to me and my son. After she recommended Chef's specialty, I decided to have 4-course and recommended 6-course to my son. 

As I had shared earlier, it ended up a very superior classic French dinner. I hadn't come back to our room until 10:30 pm. My son did go back a little bit earlier because he had been tired. The waitress who actually might be manager of the restaurant was happy that we enjoyed the dinner, so were another waiter and the chef. Since my son and I wore the sports shirts and Shorts, she guessed that we might be athletes. I told her my son looked like a pro due to his height and size but he rarely works out. I was trained as pro soccer player when I was a kid and am still very active at gym. We talked about Dutch Soccer Players, such as Van Basten, Koeman, Gullit and Rijkaard. When I mentioned Cruyff, it didn't ring the bell on her. She is probably at her late 20s, so might not know the super star in 70s very much. Later on, I blamed myself why I forgot to mention RVP. 

The night ended up greatly and I will come back to taste their fantastic dinner again in future. 

Patrick's Diary - 7/12/2015

We didn't leave Park Inn in Kastrup early enough, this might be a bad decision, which caused us not being able to get through the traffic collapse on Autobahn later. However, it didn't end up with a bad experience.

Leaving Copenhagen, we were on the road approaching the ferry carrying us to Germany. Had we driven through Odense on land, would we have avoided the traffic collapse? I don't know. Paying 700 Danish Krone at the booth, we drove to Line 8 as assigned to wait for boarding the boat. 

After approximately half an hour, we started boarding. Parking in Deck four, I was kindly reminded by the driver in front of me that I could pull ahead much closer to the bumper of his car, which made sense because cars had to be parked as compacted as possible in order to have all the cars loaded. 

Predicting not to have a lunch on the road, I bought some foods and drinks at the food stand on board the boat. Sitting outside to eat, we had to secure the plates and cups to prevent them from being blown away by strong ocean winds. The ocean in this part was wide open, you couldn't see any lands for quite a long period of time.

We were wearing the shorts but didn't feel chilly because the wind actually was a bit warm though very strong. We had been sitting in the very front of the Deck until the German side of the Ocean was visible. 

We finally drove onto the road in Germany, last time driving in Germany was in 2012, we drove the car around Frankfurt for two days. This time, we would drive 600 to 700 kilometers back and forth on it. 

Getting onto Autobahn, I became excited gradually. As you may know, many passages on Autobahn are not speed limited, this might be because Germans produce superior cars like Mercedes, BMW, Audi, even VW and Opel are great cars in their categories too, though Opel may not be owned by Germans any more, I can't remember but don't want to waste time to check online. Another reason might be Germans probably being very responsible drivers, for instance, in the last three days, I drove on Autobahn back and forth but didn't see any accidents. However, I did drive up to 150 kilometers per hour from time to time to surpass the others. Compared to many others with German license plates, I was still a young player though not a rookie, they might constantly drive at high speed as far as I could tell. I tried to upload a video clip I uploaded to Youtube but it said that it is a duplication of an earlier upload, however, I couldn't find the earlier uploaded clip either. I guess Germans don't want me to promote their Autobahn driving culture.

The next couple of hours became a disaster. First of all, we had been stuck in the traffic for more than three hours until we reach a point where three lanes became two lanes. I wished it would have been the only barrier for the traffic but it wouldn't be true. However, during the past three hours, I learned about the differences of license plate from different EU countries. Under EU logo on each license plate, one letter or two represents each country: Naturally, I saw most of the plates with letter "D", which represents Deutschland; A man in passenger seat glanced at me when their car passed at fast lane, I noticed the letter "PL" on their license plate, which I figured it Poland; I guessed the reason he looked at me interestingly was my car's license plate is with "S", which represents Sweden and I caught several cars surpassing mine at left were also from Sweden; I did see one car with letter "B", a car from Belgium. 

Just watching the clip I am about to post next, I found that I had made the right assumption about the traffic collapse while being stuck in it: Construction work in weekends. 

At one point of the freeway, we were directed to a local route by both signs and GPS instructions. We followed a truck of a Dutch logistic company and I learned Dutch license plate with the letter of "NL". 

Following the truck to get back onto Autobahn A1, I immediately sensed a huge parking lot: many drivers already stood by their cars watching ahead, I believed that they were not able to see anything. It's definitely no way for us to get through in another three or four hours and it was already almost six o'clock, even we could have gone through, we would not have arrived in Tilburg until midnight. At that point of time, I decided to get out to drive to A1 East, the opposite direction to go to Berlin. I hadn't booked the room in advance for the dates from 12th to 16th to keep flexibilities until 11th when I booked the hotel room in Tilburg because I was pretty sure to get there in the evening on 12th. This collapse cost me 100 bucks because the payment for the room was non-refundable. 

Berlin was still almost 300 kilometers away, so at one point of the time, I was thinking to stop by Lubeck for the night. After driving on East for 10 minutes, I started telling myself: "Buddy, be calm, though this is on vacation and you have flexed your schedule for the following 4 days, your plan is to go to Tilburg to have your son visiting the University the next day. Do you really want to change it because you are mad of losing 100 bucks?" Discussing with my son for a minute and seeing a hotel at the other side of the freeway, I decided to make a U-turn on a bridge over above the freeway to go back. Though that part of the freeway was not crowded, it was under construction as well. Due to the various signs in the rains, we missed the exit to the hotel and gas station we had targeted, which drove us to drive back on Autobahn A1 West for dozens kilometers until I decided to get out to a suburban town of Hamburg. 

As soon as turning right to drive into the town, I saw an Esso gas station. My original plan was to pump the gas first, then decided where we should head next. As I shared before, last time I pumped gas in Germany was three years ago but totally forgot its process. Without thinking further, I just followed the practice of cash payment at some of the gas stations in US, I walked into the store to pay for 40 liters to the gal at the counter. She probably didn't catch what I meant, so accepted 57 Euros. When I went back to the pump #15 I parked my car at, I wasn't able to pump in first try because I didn't push hard enough. At that moment, I was thinking something must be wrong. The gal went out to shout to a person at Pump #5 because she assigned my payment to that number. It ended up that I was told I had to come back the next morning to have this resolved because the gal wasn't able to figure it out in their system. Now, I actually realize, at that moment of time, what I should have done was to pump the gas anyway, then left. The gas station wouldn't lose anything and I wouldn't lose 57 euros. 

Getting the information earlier from that gal, we checked in "Myaparement Hotel" across the street. The woman at the front desk was very nice to show us everything in the room. The walk-in rate might be higher but wasn't horrible and the whole environment was great. 

Getting the recommendation from that attractive woman, we walked to a Greek restaurant probably 50 meters away by the same street. I wasn't sure all of those services people are Greeks or not, they seemed all very happy. We ordered Greek Steak and another Greek specialty the waiter recommended to my son. In addition to beers, they served each of us a shot of Greek liquor but my son couldn't take the taste, so I drank both. 

You might think it a really bad day for us: Stuck in the traffic for hours; Not able to go to Tilburg by the end of the day; Would lose 170 bucks. But as I had shared before, my personality is that I don't mind experiencing anything, good or bad. In my life so far, I have gone through a lot of bad things in addition to good ones, I have never treated them as loss or waste. At least, we stayed in a very convenient German local hotel and ate a very delicious Greek dinner. If the guy and two gals at that restaurant are Greeks as I guessed, we know Greeks aren't all sad nowadays. By the way, I love driving to travel, that is the most enjoyable part of any trips, I also love eating different cuisines, so does my son on both. After driving and eating, I generally have enough energies to enjoy visiting museums, watching performances and walking around but my son isn't able to, so I push him to workout regularly.

Germans are not always stereotypical efficient: Last time in August, 2012 when we were stuck in the parking lot at Commerzbank Arena in Frankfurt after watching International Friendly between Argentina and Germany until 1:00am the next early morning, I had learned it. This traffic collapse proved my perception again.

In Amsterdam

I know I need to catch up my diary up-to-date, now I am behind by 3 days: 

7/12 - On road to Tilburg from Copenhagen but ended up staying in a convenient hotel in suburban Hamburg;

7/13 - On road to Tilburg and had a classic French dinner at a boutique hotel there;

7/14 - Visit Tilburg University in the heavy rains and head to Amsterdam to spend a night; Walk around the city, eat our first ever Chinese meal during our overseas travel at a Szuchuan Restaurant close to Dam Square; Didn't go to Red Light District because my son wanted to go back to hotel to sleep after heavy Chinese dinner, I will leave it to him and his future wife going to appreciate Window Show by themselves. Not only men going to Red Light District, right? Many women go there to experience the unique culture as well. 

However, the hotel I booked is located in center of city in Amsterdam and costs me 250 bucks. So I don't want to waste time to stay in room to write my diary before checking out. I will catch up 7/12 & 7/13 tonight and 7/14, 7/15 tomorrow night. Writing diary is a hobby but having fun is a must.

Sharing this clip I took last night at Dam Square, a street artist was performing.

Taking a photo for my son with the beautiful river in exrotic Amsterdam at the back:

Patrick's Diary - 7/11/2015

It's 2:42 am on 7/14 in Tilburg now. I had slept since 10:00 pm from last night till several minutes ago. I can't wait for the time of catching up my diary for 7/13 to express how great the Chef's 4-course formal dinner I had at our hotel. I recommended my son to take 6-course. We spent 3 hours and a half to have this classic French. The waitress and waiters were very warm-hearted and professional. When reading the check, I was a little bit surprised that the price was very reasonable, which could be easily doubled in Paris or Amsterdam, I am sure, and they didn't give me a chance to write a tip. I don't know if I should have left something on the table or not. I generally don't regret that I lost so many opportunities to make much more money either through my family's businesses or myself when I was in 20s because of my personalities and priorities. But every time when I enjoy the upscale services, I blame myself not caring about money in the past, otherwise I could do it everyday rather than only on vacation. 

A train station is very close to Park Inn we stayed in Kastrup near Copenhagen Airport, but since we had car, we drove out to Little Mermaid after I had buffet breakfast in the lobby, my son doesn't eat breakfast regularly and he didn't get up in time either.

Driving along the beach, we took a series of curved roads to arrive at the compound with Little Mermaid as the most appreciated attraction. Learning how to pay for parking in front of the meter for a minute, we walked into the area of the harbour though it isn't the most famous Nyhavn. However we had driven through it earlier and did see many tourists there. 

Passing by the Statue of Little Mermaid, we saw too many tourists taking photos with her to have us doing it. So, we decided to walk over and would come back to do it later. I also noticed a lady selling the different sizes of Souvenir Little Mermaid by the path and would buy the largest one before we were to leave. See, I took this for my son far away from the statue.

Wandering around Churchillparken, we first took several pictures and video clips of St. Alban's Anglican Church and nearby statues. 

Then, we walked through Kastellet to appreciate the 17-Century fortress. They are all maintained as classic as in the old years, I presume. 

Back to the square in front of the harbour, we could see 3 big ships parking on the water leaning to the dock. They seemed cruise ships. 

Going back to the Little Mermaid, we found a much better position to snap the photos. I bought the largest size of the Little Mermaid the lady sold. My mom likes artworks, this is for her. By the way, I had been talking to my parents once in another day, either they called me or I called them. The roaming functions under my new plan with T-mobile worked very well. 

Driving through the crowded streets in the city of Copenhagen, we arrived at our next destination - Tivoli Garden. Parking in a nearby closed parking garbage, we walked to Tivoli. 

My son was very hungry at the time because he hadn't eaten anything and it's already 2 or 3 pm then. Walking to the corner of one of the most crowded intersections in Copenhagen, I saw the big sign of "Thai" hung on the top of the building. We hadn't had any Asian foods in this trip, so I asked my son who loves Asian foods as much as Western ones if he wanted to eat Thai food. As I shared, we generally don't eat Chinese food when travelling because we are always concerned if those restaurants are authentic or not, we may need to change our biased perceptions. However, when approaching that building, I just realized it is the logo of Thai Airways. It reminded me its Beijing office located on 2nd floor along with United, British Airways in Noble Tower back in 80s. 

Turning left on the corner of the intersection, we saw a pretty upscale Italian restaurant. Going upstairs, we only saw a group of 5 young people eating by the window, oh, it's not the meal time. 

The waitress was very lovely and we ordered the beers, my son had Pasta with meatball and I ordered fish fillet. It was a very nice view of looking down to the streets. We saw so many people riding bikes, some of them were tourists and some were locals to utilize bikes as transportations. In addition to Thai, I sought the logo of Air China as well. 

The meal was very authentic Italian, I could tell. When the check was brought up, the waitress assumed my credit card without chip and pin, so had pushed a key on hand held machine to override. However, I started using my debit card with the pin to accommodate European needs, so she cancelled the previous transaction while telling us several American tourists having issue to pay by their credit cards yesterday. Yes/No option was popped on the panel, she said if I didn't want to pay tips, I could decline. I asked her to click "Ja". 

After late lunch, we walked along the main street in Centrum to appreciate classic architectures by both sides. Walking over a bridge above the river, I saw a cop on his motorcycle at a corner of the intersection to watch the coming traffic. While still crossing the street, we heard a big sound of collision at the stop on main street: a car hit the bumper of another car, which was pushed onto the pedestrian crosswalk, fortunately, no one was walking through it then. A bunch of cops immediately ran over to check out. It looked like a setup of movie scene to me. Later on, when we walked back, we saw a cop using the camera to detect the speeds of the coming cars at the same intersection and the two cars in accident were still parked along the street. 

It's still pretty early, so we decided to enter Tivoli, earlier my son didn't want to get in because he saw many rides in it and he thought it would be a waste for us if he wouldn't take those rides as he hadn't at Liesberg. After we entered, he changed his mind and wished that we could stay until late night to have a late dinner because there were so many restaurants in it. 

By the way, while driving on the street earlier, I saw Chinese National Flags from time to time, either hung on the buildings or painted on the tour buses with other EU flags. In the park, we caught a ride with the image of Great Wall with the Chinese Word of "First Emperor" on it, which was referred to the Emperor in Qin Dynasty who had Great Wall built initially. However, from the surface, you might see Chinese influences gradually increased in Europe due to their economic powers but American culture still deeply roots into the societies. For instance, you could see American franchises everywhere.

Walking back to the parking garage, we got the issue to get into it. It's all locked up. A senior gentleman seemed having the same problem. We walked around the entire building to look for the entry and eventually I saw a door at the other end of the garage door. I left the ticket in the car but fortunately, the gentleman had his in hand because the number on the ticket needed punched at that door. Though I had learned how to pay at the machine in Denmark, I still confirmed with a young guy who was behind me. He kindly walked me through and it worked very well.

Following GPS, we drove back through the beautiful narrow streets instead of getting onto freeway to Kastrup. 

Taking a nap in the room for 2 hours, we went downstairs to have the late dinner at Salt & Pepper in the lobby. The same waitress who served us last night took care of our orders. My son initially wanted to eat buffet but he figured not much left on the tables. We ended up with one Pasta, a club sandwich and a big burger, in addition to a starter. My son loved the cocktail he had had last night, so redid it again and I had two big glasses of Carlsberg. We were definitely full.

Earlier, I had booked a room at a boutique hotel in Tilburg through Expedia and we would drive there the morning after, which would be the longest drive in this trip. However, we wouldn't make it due to traffic collapse on Autobahn A1. You will learn it in my diary for 7/12. 

Patrick's Diary - 7/10/2015

Now, it is 1:30 am on 7/12/2015. I could hear people cheered and screamed out of the window of our hotel room. A dozen houses are located next to our hotel, so Danes might have a big party in this early Sunday morning. 

In the morning on 7/11, we checked out at Radisson Blu Scandinavia in Goteborg, picked up the car in nearby public parking garage. 

My original plan was to stop by Gamla Ullevi to buy a shirt of IFK but missed the exit on the road. Stopping at the traffic lights, I noticed Ullevi across the street of the old one. Eurocup 92 final was played at Ullevi but I didn't have a chance to watch in person because I wasn't in town. However, Swedes didn't get into final, so most of the spectators were Danes and Germans in the stadium.

We hadn't gone to Liseberg yesterday but definitely would go today. It is also on the way from Central Station to our next destination - Copenhagen. Driving through the local route, we arrived at the parking lot by the park in 15 minutes. 

Many people came to the park, so we had to wait for 20 minutes to get into it. It is a Disney-like theme park, which is very popular in Scandinavia. Walking through the park, we could see more than 95% of the total visitors were Scandinavians, though I couldn't tell how many were locals. A great deal of attractions are roller coaster type, my son has feared taking it since childhood. I had encouraged him to do it every time we went to the theme park such as Disneyland, Disney World because he may have a girlfriend in future who loves doing it, and when he has kids, he will have to take them to do it. At Liseberg, he still didn't want to do it, so we sat in the game room for quite a while to play racing cars.

It approached lunch time, there are a dozen restaurants and cafes in the park. We eventually went into a cafe to buy sandwiches and drinks, then went up stairs to sit to eat. I ordered shrimp and my son ordered ham, both were very good for a quick lunch. Coffee in Europe was smaller than Starbucks as everyone knows but enough for me today.

I definitely wanted to buy a souvenir in Goteborg, so went into a gift shop. Anything else weren't very representable but a shirt with "I Love Goteborg" on it was the one I bought at the end. It's a bit small for me but not too bad. Paying at the cashier, I used my debit card again, Pin code worked very well, so even coming to Europe more often in future as I plan, I don't need to add chip and pin onto my current credit card. 

Walking to one of the corners in the park, I found a theater where concerts might be performed each night during the summer. I took a seat to sit down to imagine myself as a fan watching the concert, but immediately stood up because I could feel the chilly water soaking my butt. Oh, I forgot it was raining earlier in the morning and this chair happened to unfold then. 

Paying 100 Krona for the parking at the meter, we had planned to stay until 5:00 pm. Since my son didn't want to take any rides, we walked out of the park at 2:00 pm. It is a nice park, especially for the locals who don't have chance to go to Disneyland. 

Driving onto E-6, we were leaving Goteborg for Copenhagen. I have never figured out which city in Scandinavia is the most memorable, Goteborg or Stockholm? But I know, I will come back for sure. While driving, I explained to my son in Mandarin that Central Station probably is the city center of each major city. Since we will visit Malmo when we come back to Sweden, I told him that Central Station in Malmo is very close to Lilla Torg where I planned to have a lunch or dinner. In my memory, you can walk around the entire city, though it is the 3rd largest city in Sweden. I still plan to take a picture in front of the neat hotel I stayed in 1996 if I can find it.  

Getting through a section of E6, I heard my son's comment on the layout along the road: It is very similar to that in States. It reminded me Great Plains. 

The gas meter in the car showed half tank, I decided to pump it at a Shell probably 100 kilometers north of Malmo. 13.25 Krona per liter, it cost me 500 Krona to fill up. I just listened to my comment in this video clip, did I say 500 bucks? it is hilarious. Were it true, I would be bankrupt. Again, I used my debit card to key in the pin number, it worked out perfectly. Since we wouldn't have chance to stop eating something before we checked into the hotel, I entered 7-11 attached to gas station to buy two sandwiches and two bottles of water, then drove away.

We finally drove on Oresund Bridge, How splendid it is! As I shared several times before, last time when I traveled from Copenhagen to Malmo, this bridge hadn't been complete, so I had to take ferry. It is so convenient for the people between the two cities and two countries to commute now. I didn't have a chance to stop on the bridge to take a picture but would do it when we come back. Before getting onto the bridge, I paid 375 Danish Krone at toll booth, it's not cheap but might be because of this bridge.

I booked a hotel room at Park Inn close to Airport instead of in the city, so it's pretty easy for me to drive to the hotel and we checked in quickly. The receptionist was a trainee but explained everything to me very professionally and clearly. The only thing I had been struggling in this trip was paying for parking when staying in a hotel in the city because it seemed the instructions on the machine and others' explanations never matching the realities very well, but this one would work out completely. Taking a ticket when you drive in, paying at the machine before you drive out, then put the paid ticket into the slot when you drive out at the exit. 

We went down to the restaurant after 6:00 pm, the waitress came out to ask us if we just came from airport with vouchers for the buffet. She told us later on that a group of 43 guests would come to eat. We sat down at a table and learned the menu first. Though cocktails are ordered after dinner in general, I reversed course, ordered one with strawberry for my son, another White Russian for myself. It's the first cocktail for my son in his life. He liked it so much. While waiting for the entrees, I ordered a draft Carlsberg, the Danish brand I drank a lot in 90s. My son was a little bit inpatient to talk to the nice waitress because he was hungry, I reminded him to pay attention to his tone. The waitress spoke very fluent English, and told me his father living in Portland and a sister or someone else I didn't catch very precisely living in Olympia, the capital of our Washington State. She said a lot of English in her life because her boyfriend lives in Minnesota.

My son went back to the room first, I was waiting for the check to pay. When standing up to leave, the lovely waitress wished me enjoying the stay in Denmark. I told her it's my third time but the last one was 19 years ago. 

Going back to the room, my son said he was thirsty and went down to the lobby to buy the drinks. He actually brought back two canned Carlsberg...