Day 18: Hej då Scandinavia!
Sweden → America
July 3, 2022
Although my flight was scheduled to depart at 11:30 am, I wanted to get to the airport early since there had been recent delays and cancellations with other flights. Waking up early, I first grabbed a quick breakfast from my hotel since I wasn’t sure when I would be able to eat next and my flight was scheduled to take me from Stockholm to Los Angeles (a 10-hour & 50-minute flight). Similar to the other hotels I had stayed at, breakfast consisted of a wide spread of baked goods, bread, deli meats, fruits and vegetables, and more “traditional” breakfast foods.
Checking out and leaving my hotel around 7:30 am, I walked briefly outside - getting one last glimpse of Stockholm - before descending into T-Centralen to board the Arlanda Express, an airport high-speed rail that can get you from Stockholm City to Arlanda International Airport in about 20 minutes (reaching speeds of over 200 km/h or around 127 mph).
All Aboard the Arlanda Express
Boarding the bright yellow train, I was soon zipping past towns and the Swedish countryside arriving at the airport a bit before 8:30 am. Although I arrived early, I didn’t quite know yet what hurdles I’d have to overcome before getting on my flight. Once I had arrived and was trying to check my luggage, I found that the Finnair self-bag check wasn’t working at any of the terminals, meaning I had to wait in line for a little over an hour before being able to check my bag (meaning I then only had 2 hours to get through the airport to my gate, yikes). Since there had been such a backup at bag check, that also meant there was an inevitable line at security, which took nearly another hour to get through and led me to the passport control line. Making it through finally around 11 am, I thought I was done and headed to my gate, however, I soon found that there was (another!) line to check into my gate, making me very glad I had gotten there early. Without much time in between, I ended up only having enough time to pick up something to drink before boarding the plane for my nearly 11-hour flight.
America Bound
The flight itself was relatively routine, everyone kept their windows closed which I was a little dismayed about - especially since it was a middle-of-the-day flight and I had looked forward to being able to look out the window to see the mountains of Norway or the ice floes over Greenland, however, the plane luckily had cameras attached to the top and bottom of the plane so I could watch through the screen. About two hours into the flight, we were served lunch of chicken, vegetables, and rice, and even got the option of having blueberry juice (something at least I had never been offered on a flight before). For most of the flight, I spent my time organizing photos and finishing up my assignments, before we got dinner served about 9 hours into the flight which was some gnocchi with tomato sauce and spinach.
Opening my window touching down in California almost seemed surreal. While some of the last things I had seen while we took off from Sweden were green islands surrounded by water, landing in America was almost completely different with brown mountains and coastline beach towns, as well as the fact that the first thing I saw upon landing to LAX was a large parking lot, to the likes of which I had not seen at all on my trip.
Disembarking the plane around 1:45 pm (PST), I had thought a 3-hour layover for a domestic flight would be enough time, but the combination of airports being short-staffed and the upcoming holiday (the 4th of July being the following day) almost proved me wrong. With the returning line for U.S. citizens winding around the security area, it took over an hour to get through customs before having to pick up my bag and recheck it before switching terminals. One thing I didn’t initially count on - switching terminals meant leaving the airport because of ongoing construction, which also meant having to go through TSA again, this time with only an hour and a half before my flight departed in one of the United State’s busiest airports on a holiday weekend.
Thankfully, with only minutes to spare, I made it through to the much smaller plane that would take me the remainder of the way to Tucson. Within just a little over an hour of taking off, we were descending to the desert, and just like that, my Scandinavian adventure came to an end.
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