LH Franz This post describes the actual flight to Stockholm and the first day of activity. Except for a couple of small inconveniences, everything went smoothly. It is, in fact, a pretty boring narrative. Nevertheless, I think it’s useful to know how boring air travel can be. Indeed, how boring it should be. After all, the whole point of traveling to a place is to experience the place itself, not the chair you have to sit in to get there. That in mind, this is how the day went.
Husband dropped DD and me off at Terminal B of Newark Liberty International. We asked an airport employee where the CLEAR kiosk was. She sent us down to one end of the terminal, and although using CLEAR got us to bypass a couple of hundred people standing in line, we still had to go through a more or less routine security check, removing shoes, electronics, and little bottles. We then went looking for our gate. It turned out our gate was all the way at the other end of the terminal. The airport employee had sent us to the wrong end of the concourse. There was no way we could get to the correct gate without exiting the secured area, walking the length of the concourse to our gate, and going through security all over again. The only saving grace was that here, TSA was using a big, sophisticated, shiny new, X-ray scanner for luggage. We didn’t have to remove electronics or little bottles or anything. The machine is smart enough to identify these things packed inside the luggage. It went very quickly. Once through security, we headed to the SAS Lounge. 
The place was nice and roomy, with hot and cold buffets, lots of snacks, a self-serve liquor bar with wine, spirits, mixers, and beer on tap, as well as a separate counter with coffee, tea, and soft drinks. Comfy chairs, plentiful tables, lots of charging outlets…
The flight was on time, smooth, and uneventful. The other folks in the cabin seemed to be mostly Swedes. A quiet bunch. Even the children were quiet. Even the babies were quiet! A very calm flight but, at eight hours, extremely long. I walked up and down the aisle a couple of times to get some blood flowing in my legs, but walking was slow and frustrating. It didn’t really feel like walking so much as stumbling down the aisles. Even with that movement, I could almost hear my muscles screaming at me to move while I sat. I jiggled my knees every now and again to get blood flowing into those muscles. I did seated leg lifts – picking my feet off the floor while seated, sometimes together, sometimes alternating. I did ankle exercises – flexing my ankles while holding my feet off the floor. As I performed those seated exercises, I came up with a new rule: When flying somewhere that requires more than five or six hours in the air, I will NOT fly nonstop, but will, if possible, find routes to my destination with one stop somewhere along the way. This splits up the time in the air and provides the opportunity to get up and walk around – really walk around – and stretch legs.
After an uneventful landing, after getting through passport control, after connecting to a WiFi network and Telegramming Husband that we arrived safely, we easily spotted signs to the Arlanda Express, the train that goes from the airport to downtown Stockholm. There are kiosks resembling ATMs to purchase tickets. Instructions in English are easy to follow. An elevator took us down to the platform, where a train was waiting to receive passengers. The trip to the central station was under thirty minutes.
Our Best Western hotel was within walking distance of the station. I had printed out directions before leaving, but they weren’t at all useful. The starting point in my directions was on the side of the central train station opposite from where we exited to the street. DD navigated us through a correct route using a mapping app on their phone, latching on to WiFi networks along the way at the train station, coffee shops, and restaurants. We arrived at the hotel around 8:30 a.m, well before our 3:00 p.m. check-in time. The hotel was still serving breakfast, and the receptionist indicated we could eat there if we wanted. After stowing our suitcases in the luggage room, that’s exactly what we did. The airline breakfast had been what one expects from airline food. The vegetarian meal I got was arranged very beautifully, but it was all very bland. And the coffee was, well airline coffee. I hardly ate any of it. It was nice to have a decent breakfast with decent coffee.
We both sat at the table, kind of zonked from lack of sleep, silently resting to build up some energy. When we felt good enough to go looking for a SIM card, we asked the person at the front desk where we could buy one. She sent us to a 7-11. (Yes, there are 7-11s in Stockholm!) DD bought a card to take back to the hotel for set up. My own phone, unlike DD’s can accept an eSim. I assumed that meant I could do without a physical card. I would later find out this is not the case.
It was still too early to check in when we got back to the hotel. We hung around in the restaurant/bar area until our rooms were ready, me writing in my journal, DD with their nose in their mobile, reading Manga they had downloaded for situations where internet access was limited.
Our one-person rooms were small and compact, but comfortable. The storage bed had ample drawer space underneath and an in-room safe. 
Closet rods and hangars were not enclosed in a walled wardrobe, which gave the room an airier feel.
Dinner was at the hotel restaurant. I had vegetable pizza, which was served with mesclun salad as a topping in addition to the other vegetable toppings. I’ve never seen this before. It was quite tasty. It got a thumbs up on my New Jersey pizza-meter. I might try this at home.
