When you’re traveling between somewhat unusual places, travel time always takes longer as there’s stop-overs and lots of time in airports waiting for flights. That’s what today was.
We left our beautiful accommodation in Santorini with a bit of a heavy heart thinking perhaps we could have spent an extra day or 3 here, but that’ll likely be a common feeling we’ll experience more in the near future. As part of our car hire deal, we got to leave the car at the airport with the key under the front mat, doors left unlocked, which was bloody fantastic. Like many things in Santorini, it’s a bit of a case of close enough is good enough with the airport. It certainly adds to the charm, but there’s a few things that could be improved which would increase the level of comfort… such as a few ceiling fans in the waiting area so you can try and move the smell of passengers around a bit waiting in the unairconditioned old building.
From there – the day was pretty uneventful. Plenty of waiting in Athens airport, then we arrived thinking how bored we’ll be in Copenhagen Airport with another near 4-hour wait. Well, we were wrong about that! Basically Copenhagen has the most amazing airport we’ve come across. The floors are parquetry designed floorboards, there’s classic Danish design everywhere and the wings of the airport are themed totally differently. Simply put, it’s amazing. The only thing that trumps it? The fashion parade that is the Danish travelers. Never have we been more self-conscious about how poorly dressed we were (we dressed for comfort – big mistake) where as the Danes look like they just stopped in at one of the many, many high-end fashion boutiques the airport has to offer.
The airport is so good and the people so well dressed we’ve now put Copenhagen as a spot we’d love to come back to. Can’t say that about too many airports!
We finally got onto our flight with Icelandic Air. Now this is how to run a low-cost airline. There’s funny stuff galore – from the welcome video to the menu… it’s just superbly done and would 100% fly with them again just for their efforts.
Once we arrived at Iceland airport (it too very impressive), we grabbed our bags and proceeded to do some shopping at the largest duty free shop we’ve seen. Glen bought 3 x 6-packs of local beer as well as some travelling chocolate. No customs which was kinda weird!
First error for the trip was around the corner… Glen mistakingly assumed that the airport shown on Google Maps was the international airport which is literally 3km from the city centre. Ummm ,no, that is the domestic airport. The international one is a whopping 55km away. We didn’t price the taxi and given it was 10:30pm, we just jumped in. 15minutes in Glen asks the driver how far it is and then we learn. It ended up being the most expensive taxi ride of our lives at near-on $200, but oh well! Live and learn! After traveling for 18hrs, we were just happy to get to our very nice accommodation and get some sleep!