Sweden by way of Norway...The Scenic Route

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First, let me say that we made it from Louisville to Stockholm in one piece safely, but traveling, especially with airlines, is hardly ever a straight line. Our original plan called for us to fly from Louisville to Newark, layover for about an hour in Newark, then fly on to Sweden. Unfortunately our plans were doomed right from the start because the flight to Newark was delayed for almost precisely the amount of time we had for the layover, so we arrived in Newark about three minutes after our flight to Stockholm had taken off.

We had found out, however, that there was another flight to Stockholm through Amsterdam that was going to leave about 6:40, approximately one hour from the time we had landed. Silly us, we thought we could actually make that flight. We had to go to the airlines' "trouble" counter where they seemed to be moving in slow motion, and by the time we got to the front of the long line and explained the problem to the agent, it was too late to make that flight. We thought we were doomed (to a night in Newark), but it turned out there was yet another flight through Oslo with a connection to Stockholm. And the great thing about it was that it hadn't taken off yet!

So we boarded a plane bound for Oslo rather than Stockholm. The flight was long (almost 7 hours) but not too bad. Fortunately there was plenty to eat and drink because during the whole long day of missed connections we had only been able to eat a rather early lunch. Most of the people on the plane settled down to sleep after dinner. The airline had thoughtfully provided a pillow and blanket for each passenger. Brian and I curled up as best we could and tried to sleep. I think in total I was only able to snatch a few minutes here and there, but any sleep is better than none at all. By the time we reached Oslo we were actually beginning to feel pretty good.


The airport in Oslo is actually quite nice. It is relatively small, but very attractive with big windows looking out over pine forests. We were able to make our connection to Stockholm with no problem at all.

The only other glitch in our travel was that when we reached Stockholm, my checked baggage did not appear. We were assured by our host (and the airline representative) that it probably was just delayed or misplaced and would turn up in a day or two (it did).

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