Sun 01- Jul - 2004     We always have friends over for breakfast the day of leaving for a big vacation. With friends the caliber of Richard and Hye, this is a great idea. The morning went quickly, with good company, good eats, and last-minute housekeeping. House-sitter Eddie arrived just before 11:00, lugging his Cal Band duffle bag, a match for Aaron's. Luckily, where Aaron has a demure "Glimme" lettered on his duffle, Eddie's is labelled "Psycho Koala," so we avoided the risk of an inadvertent switch. Eddie dutifully listened to a string of fly-by directions, patted Aubrey, and permitted himself to be towed around by the girls. By 11:30 we were driving to North Berkeley BART. -K     Thomas and I  quickly decided that it would be lots easier to carry lots of heavy bags than try and wrangle Lizzie, and to a lesser extent Emma. We quickly picked bags and without discussing it arrived at an optimal bag stacking approach. I still think we got the better of the to-the-airport assignments. -A     Emma proved to be the consummate traveler. She was happy to pull her rolling backpack and entertained herself chasing pigeons on BART platforms. On BART, she sat quietly and asked alert questions about the BART map on the wall. "Where are we going? Where are we now? Where's my cousin Silla's house on this map?" -K     We moved like a well-oiled, cheerful machine all the way to SFO and the check-in counter. After a few minutes in line, Lizzie began to fuss, and Thomas stepped in with his cherished deck of going-on-vacation cards, featuring different pictures of Snoopy. That did the trick. Lizzie was happily occupied with the cards, and I think we even retrieved all of them before moving on, minus the heaviest six bags.     The security checkpoint was uneventful, and we decided to stop at Boudin Bakery for lunch and a last taste of sourdough. Fortified, we moved deeper into the terminal, Emma running gleefully on the people-movers, until we fetched up at the end of the terminal, by our gate. The airport had thoughtfully provided a children's play area right at our departure point, and since we'd gotten into position well ahead of time, our group morphed into players, player-minders, bag-watchers, and shoppers. -K The first major problem that we encountered was that our flight to Seattle was delayed ~45 min. This meant that we had quite a while to hang out in the airport. Fortunately our gate was right next to the kids' play area; everyone had a great time running around, climbing, etc. When that finally got boring it was the laptop and a new DVD to the rescue. I found a power outlet by a public phone, and Emma and Lizzie watched "Barbie as Rapunzel." The major concern now was the fact that our flight was going to land in Seattle about 10 min before our connection to Copenhagen was scheduled to depart. After a while of wondering about what we could do to make the flight, an announcement was made that 26 people on our flight were bound for Copenhagen, SAS would be holding the flight for us, and would we all please stop coming up to ask. -A Finally we were off. We joined the line shuffling toward the gate and parted in the plane. Aaron & the girls were seated together, and Thomas & I were each seated separately. It was Aaron's first taste of what his return trip will be like, traveling alone with the girls. I ended up with the girls' carry-on bags. Things seemed to be going alright back there; Lizzie fussed at the seatbelt, but then settled down. A while into the flight I fished out two surprises for the kids, turned around and asked the people behind me to pass the packages back to row 13. Then I watched the ruffle of movement and smiles go down the plane until I heard Emma say, "What's this?" -K     Things got exciting as we were getting ready to land, when the stewardess asked for a show of hands on who was going on to Copenhagen. "Look at your neighbor. If they have their hand up, you need to let them get out first. I need everyone who's not going on to Copenhagen to REMAIN SEATED until these people are off the plane. We're holding up their flight for them, there's a dedicated shuttle set up to get them to the plane, and we really need your help to get them on their way as fast as possible. Thank you!"  Sure enough, there was a special shuttle wating for us on the tarmac which took us along a couple of runways straight to the gate next to where the Copenhagen flight was boarding. We all hurried and got settled on the plane and off we went. -A Emma arranged herself comfortably in her seat and settled back. Lizzie screamed from the moment her seatbelt was fastened until the plane began to taxi down the runway, when Aaron had the bright idea to lean across the aisle and let Lizzie grip his finger. She leaned desperately across toward him, still plucking at her seatbelt's clasp with the other hand, and her howls slowly subsided. The blonde woman in front of us stopped swivelling around to glare, and as soon as we reached cruising altitude the long-awaited "Ding" sounded, and Lizzie was released. Thomas & I exchanged glances, and he nodded and took his book down the aisle and around to Aaron's assigned seat. They swapped, Aaron moved over, the girls & I shifted, and now we were in a workable configuration of two girls in the center seats, two parents on the aisles. Now we were at liberty to examine the surroundings. It was a newer plane, with screens for each seat, red curtains separating the cabins, and about 50% of the people around us had hair lighter than Emma's. The screens didn't just offer movies and a moving map of the flight's progress; they featured ongoing views of straight-down and straight-ahead. Suddenly every passenger was a front-seat driver. It was fascinating. Emma handled her headset professionally, and was lost to the world as soon as A Bug's Life started. When it was followed by classic cartoons, she couldn't contain herself any longer. Her giggles grew louder and louder. It was her first exposure to Donald Duck and Goofy. Lizzie watched the movie off-and-on, but was suspicious of the headset. She tended to press it to her cheeks. But she had fun climbing around the seats and squirming to look at the people around us. When dinner-time came, the stewardesses moved efficiently down the rows, handing out personalized children's meals before starting the main service. It was good stuff. Sleeping arrangements: Aaron & Lizzie, curled horizontally over three seats; Emma, stretched on the floor with a pillow & blanket, baffling the stewardesses when they arrived with two kids' breakfasts and only saw one child in our row; Karen, the only traditional traveler in the family, tidily upright in the chair with a blanket; Thomas----well, he didn't. -K     I'm sitting in the Copenhagen airport waiting for a flight to Bergen. Things have been going really well so far, only a couple of hiccups that were easily dealt with. The biggest problem is that Lizzie hates seat belts in planes. Every landing or takeoff, as soon as you try and put the seat-belt on her she starts screaming bloody murder: "Ow! No way! No! Ow! Owie . . . !" and heads all over the plane turn to see who's torturing the little kid. Other wise the girls have really been trading off wild running around and totaly crashed out. We'll be in the airport for about 4 hours before our last flight to Bergen. -A All of us were a little punch-drunk and drowsy by the time we boarded for the last leg of our trip. The flight from Copenhagen to Bergen is only an hour, and four of us slept through most of it. Thomas, victim of his 6' 5" frame, didn't sleep. He didn't sleep on the Seattle-Cop leg, either; every time I glanced over, his head was patiently craned forward so he could watch his screen or read his book. By the time we set foot in Norway he wasn't exactly reeling with fatigue, but close to it. And then one of his two bags didn't make it to Bergen. Ah, a restful and relaxing start to vacation. . . -K The cabin that Karen's parents have rented for us is simply amazing, grassy sod-roof, three bedrooms, living room, kitchen, and all about 15 min. from downtown Bergen. We arrived, looked around, had hot dogs and tomato soup for dinner, and crashed. Here's the view from the deck: -A Finally we're going to try and keep a diary of what the girls are saying each day, here is the E&E diary entry for Saturday 31-Aug: