Europe Trip - Part 1

Our bags are packed and we're ready to go... all the way to Europe! 

Waited 6 hours in the LA International airport for our flight to Copenhagen

Can you tell that we got a little bored? Thank goodness for Netflix! :)

This was by far the longest flight I had ever been on. Ry had been to Europe twice before (lucky duck)! Our plane was actually a lot nicer than I was anticipating for the price we paid for our plane tickets (it was a killer deal, thanks Norwegian!). We had free access to a bunch of newly released movies which was awesome. We watched at least 2 considering it was at least a 10-12 hour flight. It was so bizarre to think we left at 8:30 Friday night from LA and arrived the next day in Copenhagen at almost 5 pm! 

Ryan's mission president and his wife (Annette) live in Copenhagen and were nice enough to let us stay the night with them. Ryan's mission president was out of town on business for the weekend, so his wife picked us up from the airport and didn't waste a moment in showing us the sights of Copenhagen! 

Annette introduced us to our first traditional Danish pastry (it was heavenly!) and Danish chocolate. Then she spoiled us by taking us on a boat tour around the canals of Copenhagen, it was beautiful! 

Annette was even nice enough to drive us past the Copenhagen, Denmark temple (sadly I didn't even realize there was a temple in Denmark! Next time we go to Denmark we'll definitely have to stay long enough to do a session!) 

(Sadly not the best picture of the Copenhagen, Denmark temple, it used to be 

their meeting house and then was converted into the temple - really cool!) 

Annette wanted to treat us to a traditional Danish meal at a local restaurant, but sadly Ryan and I were so jet-lagged and tired that we just wanted something simple to eat and then go to bed. So Annette was nice enough to stop by the grocery store and local bakery to pick us up some cheeses, meats, breads (my favorite) and juice (Ryan's favorite). She kind of made fun of us for wanting their traditional "breakfast" foods for dinner. I'd always heard about the delicious breads, cheeses, and meats in Europe and oh my goodness they were even better than I'd imagined! 

The next morning of course was Sunday and we had the opportunity to go to church with Annette and her kids. It was so neat attempting to sing the familiar hymns in a different language. There was a translator there translating the meeting into English for us, turns out he was a native Dane, but he sounded American - could have totally fooled me! 

It really is true what they say about being able to travel anywhere in the world and feeling the same sweet spirit you'd feel in your own home ward. 

Sadly we only had time to stay for sacrament meeting, because our flight to Italy was scheduled for early afternoon. But Annette wanted to show us the famous Church of Our Lady before our flight. 

I didn't even realize that I would see this in the Church of Our Lady.....

The Christus Statue that is so famous back home in Salt Lake was here in Copenhagen. Annette told us the amazing story of how President Spencer W. Kimball traveled to Denmark to see the Christus statue and the 12 apostles (which line the sides of the aisles of the church). He said that the artist was truly inspired by the Lord and that is why we now have a replica of this statue on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. How neat is that? 

We also happened to come on the perfect weekend because they had the stairs up to the roof open. Annette told us that she had lived in Denmark her entire life and had been to this church many times before but never had to privilege of coming on a day when the stairs were open to go up to the roof. We climbed the many, many stairs to the top to this lovely view....

It was amazing to see the ocean all the way from the church! This was my first amazing view of traditional European architecture and it was breath taking - these pictures don't even do this beautiful view justice! 

As we were taking this beautiful view in, we looked at the time and realized we had about 40 minutes before our flight was scheduled to take off. Yes I said TAKE OFF. We raced down to the car and sped the entire way to the airport. Annette dropped us off and we took off running with our luggage as she parked the car. We ran to the airline check-in desk where we found out that we had forgotten to check in for our flight to Italy the evening before when we were so jet lagged. They informed us that because we were so close to the departure of our flight we would have to pay an additional fee to check in with the airport. We ran to another desk and were lucky enough to check in with minutes to spare. The lady looked at us and said, "That will be $700." Ryan and I looked at each other with giant eyes, the lady could tell we were American and had obviously forgotten about the currency difference. "700 in krones," she said and we sighed with relief. Luckily at the time the exchange rate for the krone to the US dollar was 7:1. But still, we were not very happy about having to pay an additional $100 because we had forgotten to check in to our flight on time (we definitely weren't going to make this same mistake twice!). We paid and went back to the desk of the airline where we were able to check our bag just in time. The lady informed us that we would need to run, yes RUN to our gate if we intended to make our flight. We said a hasty goodbye to Annette and ran to security where of course there was a sea of bodies waiting in line. I looked for the nearest person in an airport uniform and explained that our plane was scheduled to leave in 20 minutes. He looked at me incredulously and jumped us to the front of the line. 

Luckily we breezed through security and then looked at the signs to find our gate. Our gate was F24 which was literally on the opposite end of the terminal so I am not exaggerating when I say that we literally ran nearly a mile to get to our gate on time. As we were running there were signs on the floor as we ran that would say "5 minutes to F" and then "2 minutes to F." I was so out of shape and was surprised to find that I was even able to run that far (especially in a skirt- seeing how we didn't have time to change after sacrament meeting that morning). I guess when you have a lot of adrenaline pumping and will power our bodies can do the unthinkable! :) 

We made it to our gate just as they started boarding passengers. Ryan and I were sweating by the time we made it. There were quite a few people still waiting to board our flight and we had a few minutes to catch our breath and even change our clothes in the conveniently located bathroom right across from our gate. Although I was exhausted from being jet-lagged and running a mile, I was so excited for our next city.... ROME!