As you are reading this I am just about back home from my summer trip to Sweden and now I start to count the days until my return. I have tons of great photos to share, and show you where we spent our time. But for today’s post I thought I would cover the outbound part of the trip and give myself some time to sort through my camera as I have some very nice shots.

I followed my own advice and booked these tickets almost a year ago in August. I got a less that perfect itinerary, but waited for the mighty schedule change to happen. Now as always I wanted to fly out of SBN as that is my closest to home airport, but when I first booked it I could only find  100,000  points each for 2 seats last August via AZO-MSP-ORD-CDG-GOT with the last leg in coach. But what I did fly, after a few changes, was SBN-DTW-AMS-GOT all in business class other than the SBN-DTW hop on a CRJ. I picked flights that came up  325,000  points each, but that did not matter anymore due to the schedule change!

The return was to be GOT-CDG-ORD-MSP-AZO, but that too had schedule change issues and I wanted to see the NEW ATL International terminal anyway so we are flying GOT-AMS-ATL-SBN. Perfect! And all in business class (other than SBN leg).

In DTW we popped in to the skyclub for a snack and some wine pre-flight and found they have some nice new white tables around perfect for your laptop or a snack. Nice upgrade DTW!

Our outbound plane was an airbus 330 and the seats were fine. These will be the last ones to get the lie flats so I am afraid I will be on them a few more times since it will be as late as 2014 until all the conversations are done.

Food was very nice as always on Delta international flights. The appetizer was crab with avocado, melon slices and a vegetable soup (the mushroom is my favorite) .

For dinner Lisa & I both chose the braised beef tenderloin with risotto, broccoli and Bearnaise sauce. It did not disappoint!

To finish, a nummy cheese cake with a nice strawberry for desert (sorry it was so good I forgot to get my camera out before I started digging in! 🙂

I only slept a few hours and woke for breakfast. A quiche with sausage that was OK and fresh fruit. My wife slept soundly until I woke her for final call to land.

As soon as we landed we had time for either the KLM lounge or a massage. I chose a quick 20 min chair massage on the International side before customs and then waited for what seemed like a long time at customs.

Even with business class the line was long. Nothing like the masses in tourist class but still. Boarding for the GOT flight was standard KLM. Announce the Sky priority line is for elites and watch the crowd rush the gate. Ah well. We both slept all the way to Sweden.

Now we were nowhere close to being done traveling. Syd-Koster, where my family built their summer house in the 1950’s, is a 3 hr train ride from GOT and then a 45 min boat ride and then about a 15 min walk. From my front door to this front door takes more than 24 hrs on the move. But after collecting our personal things from my cousin’s flat in GOT we slept great on the way to the seaside town of Stromstad. On the boat I added FoxFi to my cousin’s Galaxy Tab so I could use her tablet as a hotspot to blog a bit here and there for the past two weeks.

For today I will leave you with just one photo to show you why it is worth this much travel to get where we were (be sure to click the photo to see it full screen and zoom to pan left and right to get the full view)! – Rene

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