Copenhagen to Paris Wednesday 27 August

Some more interesting facts I discovered about Danes and their bikes:

On the suburban trains, each carriage has a compartment for bikes; so they ride to the station, bike goes in, get off the train and ride to work. However, many Danes have three bikes: they ride usually an older second-hand bike to the station and leave it there; pick up a similar bike at the other end where they parked it last night and ride to work. Then they have a nice, expensive bike at home for leisure biking.

It’s been a long day; they called our debarkation group early from the ship at 7.30am. I’d booked a bus transfer to the airport and, as usual, Holland America organised superbly, with our bags already at the airport when we got there. This left me quite a while before my flight but by the time I got through security, found the only LEGO store in Copenhagen and found a very big Starbucks coffee, quite a bit of time was used up. Arriving at Charles de Gaul, there was the usual wait for baggage and then I decided to bite the bullet and take a cab to the hotel, rather than trying to negotiate public transport. Expensive but necessary!

I got to the hotel at 4.30pm, a cute little typical European hotel room: tea and coffee-making but nothing else for food.

I organised my stuff a bit and then went out for a little explore; being the 11^th Arrondissement, it’s a little different from the Latin Quarter where we’ve stayed previously. There’s a supermarket quite close, so (having missed lunch) I picked up some simple things but most importantly a nice Bordeaux wine and some cheese. So ... this is dinner (I've already been a good girl and had a cup of hot water and a banana) and some cherry tomatoes:

I figure the cheese will be okay for two more days without a fridge; having one glass a day won't finish the wine before I go, but I didn't buy any alcohol on the cruise, so I'm enjoying this. Believe it or not, this bottle of very nice wine cost a little over half what it cost to buy one glass of wine on the ship! Breakfast will be the baguette and more cheese with orange juice – what more could I want??? Chocolate – from the ship’s turndown service each night!! Did I mention I also bought my first yummy Paris cake from the same boulangerie as I bought the baguette?

Tomorrow I plan to head down to the Metro, get of close to the river and then start walking. I love Paris!