Malmö; Friday, 10 April, 2015

I’d stayed overnight at the Premier Inn at the airport as the flight was relatively early and I wanted some extra time in bed, but that still meant being up before the sun was. After filling up at breakfast I caught the shuttle train back to the South Terminal in a light morning mist.

The last time I’d flown from the South Terminal had been over 2 and a half years earlier, coincidently on Norwegian the same airline I was flying today. Things appear to have changed dramatically in the intervening 30 months, not least of all the labyrinthine duty free shop that you have to walk through to get to the departures lounge, the thing it most reminded me of was the path through an Ikea, suitable I suppose on a trip to Sweden.

I’m not quite certain what they hoped to achieve by the massive duty free store as by the time I walked through it and made it into the departures lounge my flight had already had a gate number up so if I’d actually stopped to shop I may well have ended up missing the flight.

I touched down in Copenhagen a couple of hours later into glorious sunshine, the last 20 minutes of the flight having been across the stunning, and incredibly neat, Danish landscape. After passing through the airport I hopped on the train across the Øresund Bridge and across my second international border of the hour into Sweden and Malmö.

The hotel didn’t check-in until 3pm, but they were happy to look after my bag so I left that with them and went for a long wander around the city centre taking in the main sights.

I had thought about taking one of the canal cruises that the guide book recommended, but it appears that unlike a month earlier in Zaragoza where I was arriving on the opening weekend of the season, I was running a week early for Malmö as none of the tours, boat or bus, were running until the following Saturday.

Instead I carried on wandering round the city centre, pretty much following the canals so following the course of the tours, even if I was having to expend the energy myself.

By the time I was back by the station it was well past the start time of check-in at the hotel so I headed over there checked-in and after freshening up headed back out into town to look for some dinner.

I found a very nice Indian restaurant in the little square (that is its actual name – Lilla torg) where I had dinner amongst the crowds of Friday evening in downtown Malmö.

After another short wander I headed back to my hotel for a quick, if not cheap, drink in the bar and then to bed to catch up on some of the missing sleep from the morning.