Copenhagen Trip - Conclusion

This was an amazingly great vacation, and we wouldn't hesitate to come to Copenhagen again. Denmark is such a friendly place, and so easy to get around in. There's plenty in the city we didn't see, and outside of town there's of course Sweden as well as other museums and castles on the Danish side.

We came out really well on budget, too, spending only about 60% of the cash we'd expected to use. Having that kitchenette in the hotel room was a real money-saver - and we still got to experience fresh, healthy Danish food. Ann appreciated the ability to just relax - read - and not have to rush anywhere. Wynn loves spending every hour with us. And I light up exploring a new culture and figuring out how to get around.

Ann finally got the time and space to read a few novels just for enjoyment, instead of for school

Monday morning we set out at 7 am for the train station, catching the 7:11 to Copenhagen's airport to allow plenty of time for our 10:15 to Amsterdam. (I like lots of time in airports...) And it was good that we arrived early, because when we went to the KLM/Air France/Delta counter to check in and drop off our luggage, the agent couldn't find our reservation.

Turns out Delta had cancelled the Amsterdam-Minneapolis flight we were supposed to be on, and rebooked us on another flight instead. (They emailed us, but in the middle of the night Copenhagen time, so we didn't have a clue...)

Instead of being put on a Delta flight directly from Copenhagen to Atlanta or New York, instead we were routed on a British Airways flight to London's Heathrow Airport, to connect to Delta's London-Minneapolis nonstop. It would add another 2 hours to our travel time, and we didn't have seat assignments on the Delta flight, but our little family is a band of explorers, after all, and what choice did we have?

It gave us an extra half-hour in Copenhagen's airport, which may well be the nicest airport on the planet. Wood floors, friendly security agents (great with kids), a full-on shopping mall airside, including an H&M, lots of places to eat, plenty of windows and sunlight and green plants. And enough seating for everyone to be comfortable.

Plus, a teensy Little Mermaid on the international wing for little girls to pose next to...

None of us had ever been on British Airways or through Heathrow before, so this was going to be interesting

Spare time to goof off at Copenhagen

Arrival at London was a little early, but the way Heathrow is set up - with five different terminals spread around the outside of the property instead of next to each other - required a long shuttle bus ride from BA at Terminal 5 to Delta at Terminal 4. (But we got to see all sorts of airplanes really close up, so I'm not complaining about that.)

Where we will complain is about the decidedly third-world setup for transfer passengers at Terminal 4, and how Delta and its partner airlines manage their London operation. We waited in line in the bowels of the building for a half-hour, bouncing from unmarked line to unmarked line and among three staff before obtaining boarding documents - but still not seat assignments.

We hoofed it up to the gate level to get to the gate for seat assignments (our worry being that we were going to be split up with neither of us next to Wynn) - to find no agents at the gate. I stayed at the gate area with Wynn while Ann ran back to a Starbucks for drinks and a sandwich - by the time she returned a few agents and another hundred passengers had shown up, all wanting to ask questions. (No monitors or self-service terminals for passengers to figure things out on their own - and the computers the agents were using were laptops, with tractor-feed paper printouts to try to determine last-minute seat assignments.)

These weren't Delta staff, by the way, rather a mix of Alitalia and contract agents, whose fist language was not English. The Olympics are in 14 months, are these people going to be ready?

We did end up sitting near each other - Ann and Wynn together, with me in the next seat across the left-hand aisle. Wynn was awake most of the way, only sleeping for the last two hours of the flight. We landed at Minneapolis about 5:20 - and waited another 15 minutes for the jetway to be repaired so we could get off. At least we didn't have to wait for our luggage!

Wynn likes having the personal touchscreen system - she hung out with Elmo most of the way over...

We finally got home about 7 pm last night (or about 2 am Copenhagen time) - I was in bed and passed out by 8:30 (and down for the count as well); Wynn and Ann only got a couple hours' sleep and have been up and down all day today.

Even though the last bit was messed up, we still got home safe and sound with all our stuff, and having had a marvelous adventure. Tomorrow, back to everyday life.

We are finally in Tokyo!

Wynn being such a good girl yesterday

during the ultimately fruitless wait

The sight of a 747 full of people who aren't going anywhere,

getting their hotel vouchers

Finally, at 9:00 this morning, our repaired aircraft pushed back and launched into the sky.

Wynn behaved better than we had expected during the 11-hour flight.

(Wells Fargo employees may recognize

that pony she's strangling.)

She got more solid sleep than either of us - only whined a few times. We arrived in Tokyo at 11:00 AM local time - that would be 9 pm Minnesota time. Arrival and customs was a breeze as there were no other flights arriving at that hour. Given how long we had been running, we thought that Wynn might be groggy at the airport, but...

here she is running laps around the luggage cart while I get money exchanged, train pass set up, hotel bus arranged.

She did finally nod off on the 80-minute bus ride into the city:

But since our arrival at 1:30 PM local time, she's been up and at 'em. They didn't have our room ready (not that we expected them to, check-in starts at 2:00 ... I was thrilled that they actually had our reservation given the events from yesterday), so we waited in the lobby for a while. Wynn was coughing - not surprising after having been in a dry airplane for the past day - but we guess that the sight of half-zombie Westerners in the lobby with a coughing Asian child looked too much like swine flu, so they kindly suggested we wait in a different hotel room until ours was ready. House arrest, whatever.

We'll go into more detail about the hotel later,

but this is our view out the room where we are now established:

It is now 3:40 PM local time - Ann is crashed on the couch, Wynn is busy converting the room into her PlaySpace(TM), and I'm trying to get the Internet to work.

Next order of business is to cross that bridge, find a restaurant that we can figure out and a 7-11 to get supplies from, come back to the hotel room, and sleep.

Still on the ground...

We should be somewhere over Alaska by now, however, Northwest has delayed the flight until tomorrow morning due to mechanical problems. Apparently the aircraft we were to be flying on got struck by lightning during the trip in from Tokyo.

Everything was on schedule for a 3:20 pm departure up to about 2:00. At first it looked like a small delay - 4 pm. About 3:00 they told us it looked like 5 pm. At 3:30 they told us they were going to have to push the airplane to the hangar, and our new departure time was 6 pm. At 4:00 that had moved to 7 pm. They finally scrubbed the flight just after 5:00.

Since NWA doesn't keep a spare 747 in Minneapolis, they gave all the connecting passengers vouchers for local hotels and T-shirts. They kept our checked luggage, and told us to come back first thing in the morning for an 8:30 am departure.

Us? We're back home, with Northwest's apologies, $10 food vouchers for the airport, and 2000 extra WorldPerks miles in each of our accounts.

Losing a day from this trip is not an option - we would only have two walking-around days and that's no good.

So I've just spent the past three hours fixing all the problems that have come up as a result of this incident. First, I called Expedia.com, where we bought our entire package through. The first two people I talked with were not native-English speakers, the connection was awful, and they weren't inclined to help. I had to escalate the call to the Customer Service supervisor, who explained that their computer couldn't change international itineraries once a flight had started.

The supervisor seemed to understand the airplane was sitting on the ground and not flying, but "that's how our computer works." He could change the hotel reservation, but not the flight reservation. He suggested I call Northwest to see if I could change flights, then call Expedia back to change the hotel.

My next call was to Northwest. After explaining the situation, the agent told me, "our policy is to help our passengers preserve the number of days they had originally planned, so we will get you out on Sunday the 5th with no charges or penalties."

Yes, you read it right. Even though the Sunday flight looked totally sold out on their website, the NWA agent was able to find room - three seats in a row no less - on the Minneapolis nonstop run. Delta, you'd better not mess with the Northwest call center or customer service team, because they really came through for us here.

I called Expedia back with the good news about the flight. After talking with yet another agent for fifteen minutes, she determined that she could not extend our room reservation - Expedia's computer said the Keio Plaza Hotel (where we were supposed to be staying in Shinjuku) was completely sold out. She suggested I try calling the hotel.

Since I'd signed up for their Executive Club card, and we were staying in their best class of room, I figured we'd have a pretty good shot with the direct approach - like I just had with Northwest. I called the Keio's Los Angeles sales office ... "Our office hours are 9:30 am to 5:30 pm Pacific Time. If you would like to leave a message, we will get back with you tomorrow as soon as possible." The time I called? 7:40 Central ... 5:40 Pacific. Ten lousy minutes.

We are a persistent family, as the previous hundred blog posts show, so I wasn't going to stop. I called the hotel itself in Japan ... it was coming up on 10:00 am there, and the reservation we held was for that night. Surely there were rooms. There are *always* rooms, especially when the country is in a panic over the swine flu...

No. Completely full on Saturday, July 4. I explained that they have us for three nights and that we would love to give them the business. No rooms available. I expressed the wish to not have to search for other competitive options. No rooms available. I stated that they would be losing bookings by not being able to accommodate us. No rooms available.

A very odd sales person I was dealing with there. Apparently business is SO GOOD they didn't want my money. (The way she said "Expedia" did have a certain disdain to it.) I told her I would speak with Expedia further.

So a third call to Expedia. This time I got an actual person in America. Another forty minutes of discussing hotel options. Some confusion over the International Date Line, and the inability of Expedia Customer Service staff to see what the Expedia.com website was showing. (Our second-choice hotel in Shinjuku, the Hyatt Regency, was showing wide open on the website, but the Customer Service person couldn't even find it on her booking computer.)

Finally. Different neighborhood -- Akasaka, which is the diplomatic district, near the Diet and most of the embassies, but on several key subway lines. A little cheaper; we're getting just over $100 refunded on the package, but similar kind of room.

At least we're not homeless in Tokyo.

We get up early tomorrow and take another crack at it.

(No pictures - the transfer cable is in the checked luggage... Wynn held up pretty well for most of the afternoon but fell apart by the time we got to the car; no nap today of course.)

--Scott

They finally got her passport done!

I had to utter the magic words "I'll pay for expedited service" and fork over another $60 plus $14.95 for FedEx overnight shipping, but at long last Wynn's passport is complete and being loaded onto an airplane in Charleston, SC for arrival here tomorrow morning.

I learned during my call with the NPIC yesterday that while they received Wynn's Certificate of Citizenship on Wednesday 6/10 (because I'd shipped it Next Day Air), they didn't actually resume working on her file until Monday 6/15. So that was three days they wasted in the process.

And of course, they snail-mailed the letter telling us they wanted her C of C... printed the letter on Tuesday 6/2, didn't actually mail it until 6/3, and didn't arrive here in Minnesota until Monday 6/8. So that was another five days they wasted (they had phone numbers and an email address on the application.)

I suppose we'll never know if my paying the expedite fee was what got the job done, but for certain we'd have had to cancel or postpone next week's trip if they'd sent her passport by regular postal mail. We do feel that we've gotten a bum deal from the State Department in this matter.

Our experiences two years ago getting our own passports was smooth and lightning-fast (normal processing time and fees.) Having seen how the agency dragged its feet for Wynn over nearly two months, yet moved at warp speed when I pulled out a credit card, makes me ask the question, "is it because she's adopted, or because she was born in China?"

That really hurts to even have to put that in print like this. Ann and I are both proud to be Americans and honest believers in our government's capability to effect positive change. There are many, many good people who work for us; but we also know that rulebooks and procedures are to be followed. We will be following up with a complaint - when we get back - gotta figure out to whom. (We are kind of short a Senator up here. Our state's Supreme Court could use a lesson in timeliness as well.)

Anyway, now that this is wrapping up, we can push full steam ahead with packing.

--Scott