New York to Puerto Rico via Stockholm

We left Teterboro around midnight for an overnight flight to Farnborough, England (without passengers). The plane had to be at the airport at a certain time because another crew was taking it straight back to Van Nuys with one passenger. The sun began coming up again within just a few hours of our departure (due to the time zones), and just in time for us to coast in over Ireland. As I looked out the window, I could see the Cliffs of Mohr and the Ring of Dingle, making me wish the pilots could just drop me off in
Dublin instead of England. Eric was in the cockpit as well, and we were looking forward to seeing some different countries together.

We landed in England and passed the plane of to the other crew, jumped in the car where the driver took us to this random hotel out in the middle of nowhere it seemed. We pulled up to the Potter's International Hotel in a little town called Aldershot and checked in with the front desk. We tried to locate our rooms, but the hotel was a complete labryinth. We jumped into the elevator, walked down a hallway, took a left, walked for a while, took a right, walked up more spiral stairs to another hallway. It was the strangest thing. All of the rooms in the hotel had their doors wide open and it almost had the feeling of being in someone's house (although the hotel was quite big). Although we hadn't slept the night before, it was too early to go to bed now. It was about 3pm so we decided to sit outside by the Cricket Field before dinner. We watched as an older man meticulously mowed the field - back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes I take a moment to think about where I am in the world and how completely random it is at times to be in these specific situations and places. It truly is like closing your eyes, pointing to a place on a map and arriving there, half sleeping, wondering if it's actually a dream or if you're really there.

The next morning, a car picked us up to take us to Heathrow Airport, about 35 miles north of Aldershot. We had instructions to board a British Airways flight bound for Stockholm! Eric and I were both really excited because neither of us had been to Sweden before. We arrived at the Stockholm airport in the early afternoon and a cab took us to our hotel. It was a cute little hotel - and the interior design was right out of an Ikea catalog. We had our own little kitchen, living room and bedroom. The hotel was also right across from the train station, so we decided to go into town for dinner. Stockholm was FREEZING, weather I'm not used to anymore living in California. It was Valentines Day and we wanted to eat somewhere nice - but Stockholm is actually really expensive. Our first stop was to the Absolut Ice Bar in the Nordic Sea Hotel. They made us put on these heavy space-age coats and walk into a room that is kept at about -5 degrees celsius.

Our drinks came in hollowed out square ice cubes and the tables were carved out of ice as well! We didn't stay too long as it was so cold inside and we wanted to head to a warm place to get some dinner. After our Valentine's Day dinner (at a very fancy Pizza Hut no less!) we headed out to the Old Town to check out some of the sights. It was dark, snowy and the city itself is beautiful, but quite eerie at the same time.

We walked past all the little restaurants, bars and went to the Castle where we were told by the guard that we needed to leave the premises immediately! Stockholm is gorgeous at night and we walked around for a while in the dark as we didn't think we'd actually get to go into the city the next day because we had an early afternoon flight out of Sweden.


Fortunately our flight to Barbados was delayed so Eric and I were able to go into the city again during the daylight hours, have lunch and take more photos.
One of the strangest things I noticed about Sweden is that while everything is written in Swedish (menus, street signs, information, etc), their English was amazing. We didn't meet one person there the whole time that couldn't speak English when we asked for help.

Later that evening, we boarded the plane and took two passengers to Barbados. The flight was about 13 hours (yikes) but amazingly went by pretty fast. We were able to stop in the Azores for fuel - which was cool because I never thought I'd step foot on those islands in the middle of the Atlantic.

We finally landed in Barbados thinking that we would be able to walk off the plane, get a hotel and go straight to bed, but unfortunately the office wanted us to reposition to Puerto Rico. After another 1.5 hour flight, customs and searching for the Marriott we finally got to bed around 5:30am. Luckily though, we were able to relax in Puerto Rico for about three days - enjoying the hammocks, the warm water and a good book!