After two days of travel I am convinced that we are either gluttons for punishment or wonderfully adaptive people who can easily shift to alternate schemes when all that is planned perfectly falls apart (with only a minimum of required whining. Always me, not Ann).

First off, Ann has a cold and cough that sounds more like noise coming from a tuberculosis ward of active patients. She is a trooper but not her sparkling self. Why now?

Second, we get to the Seattle Airport to find we have reservations for the SAS flight but with booked seat assignments only for the return leg NONE for the outward leg. I made these reservations in December! Who only gets seat assignments for the return? I think this is a rare case where I am not a fault. This means that instead of the aisle-window configuration I booked months ago we will now be sitting in different rows of five across seating between burly people who do not feel it necessary to use deodorant since they will only be sitting for nine hours.

But wait. The manager of SAS check in comes over and pounds on the computer for what seems like much too long and gives us aisle-window seats together with upgrades to Economy Extra (meaning more room). Not only that but we later find out these are bulkhead seats with enough legroom to use as a dance floor since no seats are in front of us. Life is suddenly very good. Except there was no sleeping on the plane. Ann is coughing and miserable. The Denzel Washington - Jody Foster movie is only good to waste 100 minutes. I read 175 pages of my book about a comedy writer and TV producer whose wife buys a house in Tuscany. She then makes him move to Tuscany after giving up his career. I am now getting very scared. I like it in Woodinville.

Wait I have no career.

Then we land in Copenhagen and the real adventure begins. We are still in the secured area after deplaning. Going to our connecting flight, never leaving the secure area, we must go through security check AGAIN. We have a 45 minute connection to make, the plane is a little late, the line is long and the gate is miles away. Ann tells me to go ahead since her knees will need to be personally scanned due to the implants. But it is me who was delayed by having my backpack contents re-scanned. I wait; Ann goes ahead. I finally get my re-scanned backpack and race to passport control only to realize my bag feels much too light. I go back to security. Security has taken many things out of my bag and not replaced them. I yell across a barrier if my stuff is there – my lifeblood called my digital SLR, computer battery and other manner of stuff that was never replaced was being kept by them since I did not get it. They gave it back but I became angry at them. They became angry at me. Just when I was ready to continue this easily winnable argument (it was their fault not mine that I will miss the next flight) I decided to try to catch the flight anyhow rather than give them an earful and probably then be forced to undergo a full cavity search. It is next to impossible to give up on a winnable argument, isn’t it Laurel?

The next eight minutes were a blur as I raced through the terminal looking like a freaky speed walker on performance enhancing drugs. I put moves on unsuspecting travelers that an NFL tailback would appreciate. The gate I had to achieve before 2:10 (14:10 over here) was the last one at the end of the wing that was as far from our arrival gate as it could be. I arrived at the last boarding. We were off to Frankfurt! I was sweaty, tired and angry. Ann was coughing.

Let me spoil this next part. Things did not get better. Coming into the terminal from security at the Frankfurt Airport to meet the lease car representative – we didn’t. He was not there. Luckily my new European mobile phone was put to use and it worked. I was told that we had to walk another several hundred meters to the Holiday Inn Express Shuttle bus stop with all of our luggage in tow and take the shuttle to that hotel. I don’t think I mentioned the temperature was approaching 90 degrees and the humidity was certainly approaching 90 percent. Did I mention that Ann had no wind from her severe chest cold? It was now about 26 hours since we had slept. We were spent.

The pick up of the lease car went perfectly. It took two signatures and a quick tour of the car. We were off on the nine mile drive to the hotel I had booked and prepaid. The nine miles took 30 minutes (Traffic) through rural suburban small towns. We got to the hotel, BUT - the hotel was shut up with the hotel sign taken down. There was only a note on the door with the dreaded German word: Geslossen. Which means loosely translated, “Out of business and you are screwed, Parrishes.” Orbitz.com is not on my good list at the moment but they will give me my 57 Euros back – I hope.

We drove back to the aforementioned Holiday Inn Express, rented a room there for less than the price of the closed hotel (because we picked up the car there – a discount program I was not aware of existed) walked to an Italian restaurant, had mediocre German Pizza, came back and fell asleep.

It is now 4 am – thanks jet lag. I am wide awake and pleading with the clock to get it to 5:45 am so I can go down and get some coffee. We both snickered at check in last night when the clerk said that breakfast starts at 5:45.

Lesson of Day 1, 2: Don’t snicker…