I was planning on letting this day, flying to Valencia, just being part of the general telling of my time there, because what can be told about a flight (or rather 2 flights with a layover)?
Oh, boy.
I usually ensure I am at the airport with time to spare, so 1½-2 hours before departure I’m siting in the lounge having breakfast, killing time. An hour before departure I am informed that my flight has been delayed for half an hour. How am I informed? I receive notifications from the airport’s app and Lufthansa’s app, I receive two texts and two mails from SAS and a mail from Lufthansa. All at once. Consider me informed. 5 minutes later the plane is delayed first another 15 minutes and then 5 minutes more. At least only the airport app informed me of this – until I 5 minutes later also receive mails from Lufthansa and SAS.
I honestly don’t know why SAS ever got involved. I booked a Lufthansa flight on Lufthansa’s website and SAS was never mentioned until I received all these notifications from them. One of life’s big mysteries.
At one point I decided to just go to the gate and wait there so I’m ready to go when we actually are able to board. It turns out that Brøndby (Danish football team) was playing the Rangers in Glasgow in the evening so a bunch of fans were going there for support and were on the same flight as I. Being football fans going to support their team many of them were already in a good mood – as in: they were in a beer-fueled good mood. (Yes, yes, this is in the AM close to noon, I do not see the relevance). When the delay was reaching an hour and the plane had only just arrived, the mood starts to slowly sour among the fans as the apparently only had that long of a layover in Frankfurt. Some of them were getting verbally annoyed but the riot I felt could easily be underway fortunately never happened.
With a delay of an hour and 10 minutes we were let on board (why is it that you can always identify those who are not part of the first boarding group by looking at who is crowding and blocking the access gates to the flight? Peasants!) and we were soon all seated and ready to go.
Then the captain informed us that as we had missed our preplanned window, we would have to wait at the gate for another 10-15 minutes before the tower would let us taxi to the runway. Sneaky bastard, because a few minutes later he came back on and let us know that security had arrived onto the plane to escort certain individuals off of the plane as “they were not acting in accordance to what is needed to keep it a safe flight”. 7 football fans were escorted off for everyone to see, all of them compliant and not putting up a fight. One of the guards was of the size of The Mountain with a beard rivalling that of Gandalf, I almost wished one of them had put up a fight as I would have loved seeing him folding them like a pretzel. That would have been some memorable in-flight entertainment.
With a 1½ hour delay we were off to Frankfurt where I still had 40 minutes to get to my next flight. They had just started boarding but I arrived at the gate with no issues and plenty of time to spare.
The second flight was almost boring compared to the first one and on arrival in Valencia I easily found the metro line to my hotel. After a short breather in my room at this small 1 floor 12 room hotel, I had a small walk down to the Science Museum and surrounding buildings, enjoying the park and the large illuminated buildings.
Hemisfèric (IMAX, 3d and special screenings) in front and the science museum in the background.
"Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia", stage for opera, theater etc.
Science museum.
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