Another short trip report. Just an overnight in Copenhagen to go see a ballet and a little of the city.
Since this is on SAS it now fulfills the flight requirements for the status match from BA, and I am now SkyTeam Elite Plus until November 2026. Not sure how much use I'll make of it, but I can see some short trips to Paris and Amsterdam in my future...

Well, back to this trip. The intention was to do it reasonably cheaply, so I had a return train ticket booked from Stoke to Manchester airport. I don't mind taking the train, and it's a lot cheaper than a a taxi. But the state of the railways at the moment is pretty poor, so I may have to rethink this idea in future, I certainly now wouldn't risk it for a major trip. In this case, I got an email the night before saying my train had been cancelled. Boo. OK, so the choices are to get a slower train 20 minutes earlier or a slower train 20 minutes later. I opted to go for the early train, that's a 6 am departure, but I am an early riser anyway, so that's not a problem.
The next morning I got all my kit ready and walked to the station. When I arrived I was confused not to see my train on the departures board. It turns out that as I walked to the station they had decided that the early train also needed to be cancelled due to lack of crew. So now my remaining choices were to wait over an hour at the station and if they don't cancel the next train I would arrive at the airport train station at T-80 minutes. That's certainly doable with fast track. But what if they cancel that train as well? Then I would miss my plane. So I walked out the back of the station intending to call a taxi. But at that moment a hackney taxi dropped someone off (presumably to catch the train that was cancelled and they didn't know yet). The driver asked me if I wanted a taxi and I negotiated the price for the trip at the same price my cheap private hire usually charges, �62.
So after a bit of a needless early morning ramble I eventually got to the airport quite relaxed. But instead of cutting it fine, I was now massively early. T-200. There has been some talk recently of people being rejected trying to go through security pre T-180. But in this case it worked fine, so I don't think it's a hard rule, or the limit isn't precisely three hours despite what you are told if denied entry.

SAS don't have a lounge contract at MAN T1 unlike Air France or KLM at T2, so I decided to get breakfast at one of the cafes at the top of the escalator. There are three different places right next to each other but they are all more or less the same. So I went for the Giraffe option and a booth. Full english, bloody mary and tap water served up was fine, but at nearly �30 you can see why people would pay for the lounges. However the quality of the breakfast was better and the seating more comfortable than the T1 lounges, so it's probably only worth paying for lounges if you want to have a several drinks rather than just one. Installed in the booth I got my latest travel toy out. A 15.6" portable LCD screen that plugs into the phone. The phone has 1TB of storage, so I have a huge number of MP4 files on there to choose from. On this occassion I chose Samurai Assassin. It's a classic Toshiro Mifune film (you will recognise his face even if you don't recognise the name) and really a Shakespeare tragedy rather than the straight up gore fest that it sounds like. I spent about an hour and a half watching before getting restless and wandering round the airport. Eventually settling down to a window view and watching my bird arrive and taxi to stand, so I wandered off in pursuit.

Very odd gate, 24 I think. The gates in this spur are set out on both sides. But in the middle is the segregated lane for arriving passengers, so to reach gates on the other side from the corridor from the main departure area you have to go down some steps, walk under the arrivals corridor and then up the other side. It appears to be what my colleagues would call "an engineering solution" by which they mean it's a lash up but it works so shut up.
There was an odd concrete shoot by the gate, no idea what that was about, but I'm sure someone here will know :]

The flight itself was pretty ordinary. Very few passengers in SAS Plus class. The photo is *after* boarding complete.

I managed to watch the rest of the film on my new screen. But to be honest it was a bit inconvenient with all the wires etc in the cramped economy seats.
I wouldn't say theoretical seating worked because there were very few people on the flight so no-one really had any unwanted neighbours. The Easyjet flight to Copenhagen that left a few hours before might have been a different story.
Managed to use my Eurobonus points to buy a drink on board. Never going to have enough for a flight reward, so may as well use them up.
Tea and Coffee are free on SAS even in basic economy, so they trump BA there.

On arrival the Metro to the city centre was 60DKK for three zones, easy to buy tickets right at the entrance and it's just a short well signposted walk from arrivals.
The hotel I had chosen was the Hotel Bethel, which was close to the central Metro interchange station Kongens Nytorv and the 'main drag' of bars and resteraunts on Nyhaven. I was forewarned that although Danish looks like you should be able to pronounce it, because it uses mostly the same letters as English, any attempt to do so is doomed. This was amply demonstrated by the Metro announcing the stops. It was not easy to match up the spoken word with the names on the map. The only word of Danish I attempted was tak!

View from the hotel room.

After dropping the bags at the hotel I set out for the restaurant where I had booked a late lunch at 3pm. They only do lunch and the kitchen shuts at 3:30 so I didn't think I was crazy early when I got there at 2:10, but the guy looked at me as if I had gone mad. So I had to go for a walk around the waterfront until they were ready for me. To be fair it was small and crazy busy.
The walk took in the other two main theatres in Copenhagen, The New Opera House and The Playhouse as well as the Amalienborg Palace complete with bearskin hatted guards with automatic weapons not looking at the tourists who were getting in their faces taking pics.

The restaurant was Amelie. It gets a mention in the Michelin guide but no stars. Traditional Danish food. Inside they had a menu for foreigners with about six languages, but I think I may have been the only foreigner there at that sitting. It mostly seemed to be locals having a bit of a treat.
I ordered a seafood dish to start (herrings with eggs and curry mayo) and a meat dish for main (Parisian steak tartare). There is a tradition in Denmark that you eat your food with 'snaps' which is a small shot of spirits to aid the digestion, and a beer. So thinking it would be rude not to, I went for the recommended options for both courses. The lady serving me took some time to explain the flavour of the first snaps. Eventually coming back with an ipad with pictures of what looked like a white wasabi plant. Then the penny dropped, it was flavoured with horseradish. I'm glad she took the time to explain because the flavour was super strong and would have been a massive shock otherwise. The next one with the main was a fairly anemic cucumber and dill.
The food was okay, but not exactly fine dining. Not sure I really like the idea of a cooked steak tartare. I was grateful that they served a single diner at the same pace as they would treat the rest of their diners instead of shoving plates at you as fast as they can to get you out of the door. After my bank has translated the price to LSD it comes to �69. Apparently their credit card processor levied a fee on non-European cards even though I paid in DKK, first time I've come across that. Usually my First Direct debit card works fine and has no transaction fees.

An hour and a half later when I left, I was very full and the two beers and two snaps had made a noticable impression on me so I was glad to go back to the hotel for a little lie down before heading out to the Old Stage (the original opera house before they built the huge new one) which was just up the street back where I arrived on the Metro.
The opera house looked exactly as you would expect an opera house to look. The house opened at T-60 and doors open T-30, but there is a cafe and a shop\box office in there which are open for quite a while earlier on performance days.

My seats were on the second tier but had a good view. Each tier gets it's own bar and open cloakroom. The actual performance was pretty good. It was the premier of Blood Wedding. The program was only available in Danish, but Google translate worked pretty well on it, so I was able to understand what was going on. It was a mix of Flamenco singing and dance with classical ballet and story telling mixed with a fantastical supernatural moon theme. It was pretty enjoyable and much better than the last thing I saw at Birmingham in the UK. They had an unusual circular rotating stage arrangement where there were ropes dangling down to divide a crescent off (reminiscent of the moon theme) so you could get two pieces of action going at the same time, and still communicate between them. So quite a technical staging.

The applause was long and loud at the end of the performance (as it always is at ballet) but the choreographer looked very pleasingly surprised by the reception. I also applauded the lady next to me who during the performance ripped into a guy on the row behind who got his phone out in the middle of the performance (presumably to take pictures). The brief scene caused was immensely better than just being polite and letting him annoy everyone with his bright screen, and it's very hard for a 20 something guy to argue with a 60 something lady.

The flamenco singer was off stage. In true opera style she could probably be called 'a lady who loves cakes'.

Next morning the breakfast was the usual European fare. The only hot item available was boiled eggs. For some reason they decided that the basement would be a good place to put the breakfast room. The only natural light coming in from windows placed so you could see the feet of passing pedestrians. But with effort I consumed enough bread, cheese and ham and some very nice coffee, so was ready to start the day. Next stop Rosenborg Castle, the seat of the Danish royal family during the 17th Century and home of the Danish Crown Jewels. I had budgeted two hours for the visit, but I think one would have been plenty. It was interesting but quite small.

What's the one thing you have to see in Copenhagen? So that's where I set off to next. Taking a walk as it was a nice brisk dry day and it's only 2km on the map. It was about 4km by the time I got there, but still not so bad as I quite enjoy getting lost in new places.
Not sure what these orange buildngs were about. They looked quite old and very small.

OK. So here she is.
While I was watching a lady decided to climb over the rocks so someone could take a picture of her. She fell in. Obviously thought it was funny, but I was just waiting for her to get out of the shot. I did think of shouting "You have legs not flippers, so flip off" but the little monitor that sits on my shoulder told me it would probably not be as well received in real life as it sounded in my head.

After that I went directly to the �sterport metro station back to the airport. No need to go back to the hotel as my luggage consisted of a single small backpack so I took it with me. Note, although it was small, it only just fit in the biggest lockers at the Rosenborg Castle and ended up nearly tipping over the stand of lockers trying to get it out after I had previously jammed it in. The metro was a lot busier on the way out than on the way in, standing room only for much of the journey.
Getting off at the other end a welcome sight awaited me. SAS Fast Track.

SAS Fast Track was staffed by very friendly, calm and patient staff and had two machines. Lucky that, as there was one other person there, so if they only had a single machine I might have had to wait.
Exit from the fast track is either straight in to the duty free shop, or you can bypass it through a short corridor on the left. Either way you come out right next to the SAS lounge. No need to talk about the lounge as it was in an earlier trip report. The food offerings were pretty poor in the gold section and they were not particularly fast restocking empty stations of food or drink. But the staff clearing plates and cups were much more proactive than you will see in any BA lounge, and many punters were bussing their own empties to tray stations as well. A cleaner lounge with better behaved people than you see at many locations. No-one taking loud calls or with their feet on anything.
Passport control was painless to get to the non-Schengen gates. So I ended up at the gate a lot earlier than I needed to. We got pre-boarded into a waiting room about T-30, then boarded and departed on time. The C gates waiting rooms are a lot bigger and more pleasant than the A gates ones I departed from last time.
The return flight was uneventful. I decided not to get the large screen out but to watch "They Live" on my phone. Quote... "I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ..., and I'm all out of bubblegum." Lots of other great quotes as well.

Isn't that usually called a "hamburger"?

Towards the end of the flight I thought I'd better check on my return train. The internet on SAS is free for gold card holders and has worked reliably on the six flights I have taken. But on the subject of working reliably, the same cannot be said for UK rail services. My train is cancelled. Looks like my recommended replacement will get me home over an hour later. But since I am an optimist at heart, and was near the front of the bus, I bolted off when the doors opened to give myself the best chance of seeing what could be done.
The e-gates at MAN worked first time with no queue. So up in the lift for the walk down the tunnel to the train station. Watching the monitors as I enter I see that then next train to picadilly is in 40 minutes. But there is a train with people jumping on it. So I jumped on it and asked the guard, "Picadilly?" he said yes. The people behind me weren't so lucky as he manually closed the doors on them and explained through the closed door that they weren't getting on. And away we went.
Now time to find out what we can do to get home. Grrr, the next train to Stoke is the one I would have got had I waited at the Manchester Airport station. But wait, what time does this train arrive? There is a train to Stoke that departs 2 minutes after this one is due to arrive. Could I? As we arrive at Picadilly I am positioned by the door, jump off and get the the elevators up from Platform 17 before the crush of other passengers gets there. There is a bridge that connects the platforms right at the top of the escalator, so no need to go down to the main station to connect across. It has been raining so the bridge is slippy and I can't go very fast, but I walk straight across to platform 4 and see the train there. Down the stairs and push myself through the door with a mass of returning football passengers. So I am now on time to get home an hour earlier than I expected rather than over an hour later. The guy in front of me has also come from the airport train, his wife is wearing heals rather than sports shoes, so is still not on the train and it's about to leave. Luckily she makes it just as the platform guard closes the doors and there is just about room for her to get inside. There is a bit of jostling, but luckily we are all so jammed in that's impossible for anyone to fall over. Various passengers are debating what stops we are at as we go. There's no way to move to see the station names on the platform and there are no announcements. I recognise the Stoke platform when we get there and as I am negotiating my way to exit, can hear a lady asking if this is Macclesfield and being informed she's missed it. Well, every day a little rain falls somewhere, today was her turn not mine.
Home to bed in plenty of time to start work at 6 am the next day.