After visiting Palau for five days, we flew home via Seoul and Frankfurt. Above is our chubby A380 friend taking us from Seoul to Frankfurt.

The seat, spacious to say the least. A first (sorry) for me was that there was a sliding door you should shut, meaning almost total privacy. We sat in two adjoining middle seats and almost had our own private little compartment. So cozy.

Not too shabby: caviar with condiments and champagne started the meal service. Enjoyed with a glass of Barons de Rothschild blanc de blanc champagne.

You could choose either lobster or caviar, so we took one each and shared.

The main meal: bibimbap with plenty of sides. Everything was delicious (for being on a plane) and went down well with a nice glass of red.

How was it?

A great flight. Unfortunately we were a bit too tired because of our 5 a.m. departure from Palau to fully enjoy the experience. But both space, food and service was excellent. Service and food wise, Singapore Airlines that we flew to Asia won. But in terms of the seat or suite, with an actual closing door to your little space, was the best I’ve ever experienced.

I recently returned back to the cold after a fantastic trip to Asia which started off with a trip with Singapore Airlines in First Class, thanks to burning a couple of years worth of Eurobonus points (airline miles).

As a perk for Scandinavian passengers, the usually-with-Eurobonus-points-off-limits First Class cabin is since a while back now available to book on the Copenhagen-Singapore route, giving less rich travellers like myself the opportunity to try among the best of the best in the skies.

After a relatively non-exciting SAS Plus flight from Stockholm, we arrived Copenhagen Airport. We weren’t sure which lounge to use, since we are not gold card holders and Star Alliance has two lounges in Copenhagen; SAS Gold lounge and SAS Business lounge.

SAS Gold Lounge Copenhagen

When we arrived the lounge reception area we showed our first class tickets and were immediately pointed towards the Gold lounge; Yay!

While not incredibly exciting, it had a decent buffet, a good enough selection of alcoholic beverages (but no bubbly), and best of all: a Barista manned coffee bar. While it closed the second we arrived due to staff shortage, our initial dissapointment was turned into the opposite when they opened an hour later, producing a nice latte, even with some latte art vaguely resembling a heart.

But, really, who cares about the lounge when you are about to try Singapore Airlines’ First.

Boarding SQ351

When arriving the gate area of our flight, we saw our names on a screen with a message to approach. Apparently we had to show our visas to China, which we did not have due to planning to use the 144 hour transit visa. After some (very friendly) discussion we were registered and handed new first class boarding passes and asked where we would wait so they could keep an eye on us as we would be boarding the plane First (sorry).

Just a few moments later a man with a first class sign appeared, we discreetely waved and he came and walked us to a check in counter. It was time for the experience to begin!

Upon entering the cabin, a technician was working on my seats reading light, something the staff clearly was displeased with. I did not mind at all, as the guy was just finishing work when we arrived, but it made me wait a whole minute or so before being able to sit down (which I used to take pictures). Nevertheless, the staff apologized immensily on several occassions and after a while they told me they’d decided to hand me a couple of hundred SGD worth of inflight shopping vouchers as compensation. While I was already totlly happy with the free-flowing Dom Perignon and Krug champagne, this was quite impressive in terms of service and their ambition to create a perfect experience.

Food and drink onboard

Shortly after take-off the meal service (lunch) started. Unfortunately Singapore Airlines’ book the cook service is unavailable on the Copenhagen-Singapore route, but a few days before leaving we could log in and see what meals that were available on our particular flight.

To drink there was plenty of good stuff, while mainly focusing on Krug and Dom Perignon champagne, we tried some of the onboard red and whites as well as whiskey (Blue Label and something Scottish).

The food was given our location extraordinarily delicious even though it was of course in the end still airplane food.

First up was chilled Malossol caviar with Melba toast and condiments (chives, lemon, egg, raw onion).

It was either caviar or lobster for starter. I asked to have both, but they were short on supply. Luckily I traveled with my partner so I convinced her to take the lobster salad so that we could try both. The caviar won.

“Care for some more Dom Perignon, sir?” –– Well, if you insist!

Main course: sirloin Rossini with decently tasty steak, fried foie gras, marsala wine sauce, Pommes Anna (potato cake), spinach and mesclun salad. Decadent and tasty, but a notch under “wow”.

Cheese board.

Some kind of delicious ice cream cake finished of the meal. At this point I was beyond full.

The seat and First Class cabin

The First Class cabin onboard Singapore Airlines’ 777-300ER is quite tiny, since it only consists of one row of seats, meaning there are only, maximum, four first class passengers onboard.

While very roomy and comfortable, especially in terms of width, it is not a ‘suite’ per se, with for instance an actual “door” you can slide shut, as some airlines offer.

But you wont suffer, the seats were as mentioned very comfortable for pur 12 hour flight. We actually managed to share one seat, sitting next to each other watching a movie, eating chips and drinking champagne. Incredibly nice. Especially since we usually fly economy, and all too well know the pain of sleeping leaned against, at best, a window, that 200 or so less fortunate passengers were doing at that same time.

When it was time to sleep, our seats were turned into comfy beds with matresses and duvets, and I got a short 3 hour sleep before it was time for breakfast. That breakfast by the way wasn’t too exciting, on the other hand probably due to me being way too tired.

Next time I’ll try to throw in some more sleep, but it’s very hard when you literally are up in the clouds with fantastic service, comfort, drinks and food.

Conclusion

I’m definitely no premium cabin flyer, even if I try to when possible. If I pay myself (this trip we used miles) I almost always fly economy class. So I guess what I am trying to say is that I really appreciate how good and special an experience this was.

Having said that, I’ve before tried Asiana First Class as well as Thai Airways’ First Class, and while both have slightly “better” seats than Singapore Airlines’ 777-300ER First, I still think that my trip with Singapore has been the best so far. The attention to detail, the amazing service from the friendly crew, the wines, the food made this an extraordinary experience I will definitely forget – and hope to sometime experience again.

Just a short review of our trip with Thomas Cook Nordic from Stockholm to Banjul, Gambia via Las Palmas in their Airbus A321 (booked trough Swedish tour compamy Ving).

When previously flying to Cape Verde with Thomas Cook Airlines, they put us in their large twin aisle A330 aircraft. Hence, I was a little surprised when we booked a trip to Gambia, which is about the same distance, but for this trip the much smaller single aisle A321 is used. Unlike the larger aircrafts, there’s only economy class onboard, but you can “upgrade yourself” with extras such as seat pairs, fancier meals and proper champagne to make the trip a bit more bearable.

Seat pairs

To get some extra privacy we pre-booked one of four seat pairs (rows 10 and 24) for about 500 sek for two, one way. The problem with these seats though is that you are right in front of the emergency exits, meaning no window, and that you, when seated on the right hand side also sits next to the crew seat. That is not a great concern, but it means that the crew will slam down next to you the few seconds before take off our landing.

Crowded for such a long flight

The plane, since not really intended for such a long flight as Stockholm-Banjul (about 9 hours), feels quite crammed. There are four lavatories – one in the front and three in the back. And since it’s a “charter” flight, people tend to drink quite a lot, and hence there’s usually a line, especially in the front.

Thomas Cook Airlines Onboard Menu

I usually like to read onboard menus before traveling, must like because I’m a total geek. But if you’re like me: here you are.

Food onboard

We opted to upgrade to a ‘Royal Meal Meat’ which is 295 sek per person. It is quite steep, but then a drink of choice (except champagne) is included, so in the end it is 130 sek (€14) more than a regular meal and a beverage – in my mind it was worth it. The Royal Meal came on a tray with ‘real’ porcelain bowls and plates, and all dishes were served at the same time. First up was a Swedish Skagenröra, meaning a shrimp, dill and mayo salad, and some sliced salmon. Both were surprisingly good, especially the shrimp salad. Warm bread was also served. Second was a “grilled”, it actually had decent charr marks, beef fillet served with green peppercorn sauce and potato gratin. As usual, the meat was quite cremated, but flavours were good. After that was a few slices of nice quality cheese, crackers and a few pieces of fruit (grapes and dried apricota). Finally a square of a really nice mint-chocolate cake that would’ve been yummy even outside of a plane. This was washed down with Nicolas Feuilatte champagne (90 sek) and Wooly Sheep Pinot Noir from New Zealand (60 sek). Credit to Thomas Cook for providing decent wine onboard!

On the shorter leg to and from Banjul, a small complimentary meal was served. Bread, pastrami and coleslaw on the way to Banjul. Pasta salad, salmon and bread on the way from.

Las Palmas Stop

Since the plane is so small, it has to land on Gran Canaria for refueling, adding about two hours to the trip. On the way there, we just sat around in the plane while refueling. On the return flight however, we had to de-board, go through passport control and security check before reboarding. As I understood it though, this was an exception due to planned service of the plane we arrived in. We kept our seats as it was the same plane model but obviously had to remove all our stuff from the plane.

Did we survive?

All in all, the flight to The Gambia was pretty much a breeze since it’s during daytime. We brought and Ipad, ate our upgraded meals and drank champagne. The return was worse though as the plane is tiny and you fly home at night, meaning you’d probably want to sleep. It was nearly impossible to find a surviveable sleeping position (and I’m not a tall person). Since we had the crew seat next to us, there was no window to lean on either for extra support. But, it is still about 8 hours of flying in total, so of course we survived, and it was absolutely worth it to visit amazing Gambia.

I visited Pontus in the Air, Stockholm Arlanda airport’s sort of fancy restaurant, on the way to Bologna recently.

It’s a welcome addition to Terminal 5 (post security) where there are not that many good options for a good meal.

Pontus in the Air is named after owner Pontus Frithiof who runs a couple of restaurants in and around Stockholm city, for instance the local branch of Burger & Lobster. The ambition is to serve good quality food to travelers, be it breakfast or dinner. They, in contrast to the other airport eateries have their own kitchen, and they also have a quite large wine cellar.

Lots of fancy wine
Since they don’t have a menu of their wine online, a took a shot of the current (July 2017) by the glass wine list which you can find below.

Tasty food
We had the burger, and the shrimp sandwich, as well as a decently priced half bottle of Henriot champagne. Both were actually great. The burger was juicy and cooked to a perfect medium while the shrimp sandwich had a good pile of fresh, sweet shrimps with a tasty smokey mayo. Fries are always important, and Pontus’ did not dissapoint, especially not when dipped in the to the burger accompanying truffle mayo. There was also supposed to be fresh truffle on the burger, but I couldn’t taste any. My guess, probably due to summer truffles which are usually quite tasteless in my mind.

A nice place for a relaxed pre-flight meal or drink
Pontus is a very nice place to pay a visit to if you don’t mind to fork out a little. It’s not that much more expensive than other food and drink options in the airport either, and compared to what I’ve tasted – far better. Until 2017-12-31 I learned (and used succesfully) that you get 10 percent off the bill with the ‘code’ “travel news”. I mentioned it to the waiter before ordering and he went to check with a colleague and then took 10 percent off our total bill, simple as that.

8 years ago, I first visited Japan, and immediately loved it. I’ve been wanting to go back ever since, but it took that my brother moved to Kyoto to force me to lift my butt, enter R2D2 and bring myself to the land of riding suns, fantastic food and great people.

The trip started with a short but decently nice flight with Lufthansa from Stockholm to Munich. At Lufthafen Münich, aka Munich Airport, we had to visit Airbräu in Terminal 2, the world’s only airport brewery. Delicious weiß (wheat) bier und a pretty good veal schnitzel with German potato salad were enjoyed.

Then it was time to board R2D2. All Nippon Airways has somekind of a deal with the Starwars franchise, meaning a couple of their planes are Starwars painted. 

The onboard experience in Ana’s economy was decent enough. We flew the semi-new Boeing 787 Dreamliner which had onboard wifi (I paid 22 usd for wifi use for the duration of the flight. There were a couple of less expensive options too), a decent personal screen with eg. live tv (for instance with CNN and Japanese NHK premium). Leg room was also fine, and the food decent. Above is dinner, I chose the ‘Western’ option which was a beef curry with steamed rice. Everyone had the same starters which was cold soba noodles, pasta salad with parmesan, bread and a small mixed leaves salad. Food was quite good, given being on a plane of course. All drinks and food were complimentary.

Then, touchdown in the greatest city on earth, Tokyo! It was cold, rainy, dark, and beautiful, in a blade runner kind of way. We checked in to our tiny 9 square meter room at Sotetsu Frésa Inn and went out for food.

The first place we ran into on the street outside our hotel, Yotteba, advertised great chicken wings and beer. Cold as we were, that sounded too appealing to resist.

Edamame, served cold by unknown reason.

Spicy, quite delicious lightly fried chicken wings.

Delicious gyoza!

Stay tuned for more delicious Japanese food adventures and travel. Make sure to also follow me on Instagram for the latest updates. Arigato gozaimasu!

Last weekend I visited the Finnish capital Helsinki for a 70 year birthday party. Since Helsinki is such a short flight from Stockholm (approximately 45 mins) you can go straight from an (almost) full day work and still have a decent evening out. Many airlines fly this route so you’re usually able to score decent priced tickets during campaigns. We flew Norwegian and just barely had times to finish our sparkling wine before landing (not included in ticket). The only gripe is that Helsinki’s an hour ahead, so you’ll lose an hour due to the time difference, although you get it “back” on your return.

For our first night I was so lazy so I just scanned google maps for a good-rated restaurant near our hotel Glo Hotel Arts. I managed to find Ravintola Saaga or Saaga restaurant, which is a semi-fancy and sort of touristy Lappish restaurant. We started with a glass of sparkling wine topped with cloudberry liquor and some free nibbles from the kitchen consisting of reindeer jerky on rye crispbread with horseradish cream and pickled onion.

For main, fried sea pike with king crab from the Arctic Ocean, roasted butter sauce, cauliflower purée and crisp malt bread. I also had a delicious slow-cooked reindeer shank with mushroom purée as well as pickled mushroom, the picture of it in the dimly lit restaurant however, wasn’t as delicious.

For dessert we had iced cranberries in an ice bowl. The bowl was, as the name implies, made out of ice, which was a quite cool (sorry) feature. The caramel-liqourice sauce that came with it was delicious. The main problem with this dish was when the sauce started to cool (sorry) and was poured over the even cooler (sorry) iced cranberries. It of course did not defrost them as the general idea of the dish was, and that meant you had to eat frozen cranberries with cold caramel sauce for the last part of the dessert. Great idea though, and very tasty as long as the sauce was warm. Eat fast in other words.

We also tried the Lappish squeeky cheese with a pine-tar cream, cloudberry crumble and cloudberry sorbet. This was also a very clever and unique dessert with the tar flavour shining through the dessert’s different components, giving a tar-y smoky taste, contrasting the sweetness of the cream and sorbet. The cheese did not taste that much but had a nice texture.

Price for a meal €€+

Prices were semi-expensive, but not that bad considering Helsinki is a quite expensive city. We paid about €130 for 2 mains, 2 desserts, 2 glasses of sparkling wine with cloudberry liquor and a bottle of the least expensive wine on the menu.

Service was friendly but a little bit slow.

Website (menus and online booking in English available – through a form)

The rest of the trip was spent walking Helsinki (above is the beautiful Helsinki Cathedral) and attending the birthday party.

Where we stayed

We stayed at Glo Hotel Art a few blocks from the city center. The rate was about €90 and we had a very small but comfortable room with wifi, motorized bed, shower and flatscreen TV as well as breakfast included.

Website

January, probaby my least favourite month of the year. Mostly because it is usually (very) cold, without the ability to tell yourself to think of it as ‘christmassy’ to make it a bit more bearable. It’s also the starting point of a very long stretch towards Spring which hopefully will happen somewhere in late March/April. In this time we also talk about the seven setbacks. Meaning that when you first think that Spring might actually be happening, a massive snowfall will take you down to earth. And then you relive this moment of agony seven times. That is January to March in Sweden. Hence, I travel.

This time the plan was to visit the Gambia. I recently visited Cape Verde which I really liked, and since I like to visit new places and have a newfound fascination for Africa, Cape Verde’s semi-neighbour Gambia sounded like the right place. The plan was also to visit neighbouring Senegal and possibly, if we were feeling extra adventurous, visit also neighbouring Guinea-Bissau. Then came an election, democracy was on the horizon for Gambia. But unfortunately, to this date that hasn’t happened. The neighbouring states in the Ecowas has threatened Gambia’s incumbent leader with a military intervention if he doesn’t step down. So far he hasn’t and therefore we decided to not go. Instead, we’re on the Canary Islands. The idea was to fly here from Sweden, stay two days and then fly on to Banjul with regional airline Binter Canarias. But now we’re here for ten days instead, and fortunately were able to secure the last room at a very nice hotel. Anyway, below is a couple of pictures from the trip so far.

Food onboard SAS’ Plus class (which is sort of an inbetween of premium economy and business class): brisket, roast root vegetables, horseradish cream and French bubbly (no champagne though) in a nice airplane-adapted glass from Swedish design company Orrefors. Might also have had a small bottle of Italian Zinfandel as well as a Danish Mikkeller craft beer. I really like SAS’ cooperations with Nordic high quality brands to add to the onboard experience.

Playa del Inglés, where we stayed our first two days at the Sentido Gran Canaria Princess. Great rooms, lousy wifi, decent breakfast and dinner buffet.

Dunas de Maspalomas. A small desert-like area along the beach. We walked there for three hours without sunscreen meaning we are now charmingly pink. Such morons, but we were angry over not being able to go to Gambia so we forgot.

Beach.

The we decided to stop whine and start to wine (sorry). Well, at least drink. Caipirinhas at Sentido’s pool bar.

Buffet dinner at the Sentido GC Princess hotel. Padronés, asparagus and jámon.

Yesterday we met with my sister who is currently living here working. She took us to Misbah, an Indian restaurant in Meloneras where had a really nice Indian dinner as well as a surprisingly good sangria. I tried their murgh makhani, or butter chicken, with naan, pilau rice and mint sauce. Slightly expensive, but in a nice location. Worth a visit if you crave Indian food while visiting Gran Canaria.

To be continued.

Just got back from our trip to Cape Verde. We traveled there with Swedish tour operator Ving, which is part of Thomas Cook Northern Europe. Hence, we flew with Thomas Cook Airlines for our 7 hour trip (actually 6 hours, 40 minutes) to Cape Verde.

I will write more about the actual Cape Verde trip (and the food) in a separate post. UPDATE: Here it is – a guide to what to eat in Sal’s Santa Maria.

Anyway, as the cost for upgrading to Thomas Cook Airlines’ Sun Class was quite affordable (600 kr or about €60) return, we opted to go for it. What it gave us was basically another 10 cms of space and our own front of the plane-cabin. Otherwise food, personal tv screens and service was the same as regular economy. So this “review” pretty much covers that as well, for the interested.

Seats
The whole plane, an Airbus A330-300 felt quite new and clean. The personal screens were HD and was one of the best I’ve seen on any flight. You had to pay to access movies (35 kr/sek) and some of the other content. However using the inflight map, listening to music and viewing some of the other content was free. You could also plug in your own headphones and charge your USB-device through the screen which in my mind is a huge plus.

Food and drink
I eavesdropped to a conversation about the food between one of my fellow passengers and one of the flight attendants. Apparently Swedish pre-fab food company Dafgårds handles the inflight food catering for Thomas Cook Scandinavia. The food was quite good for being on a plane actually. Everyone was served the same dish which on the outbound trip was chicken salad followed by pannbiffar (Swedish burger patties) with peppercorn-cream sauce and mash as well as a standard airplane dessert. Warm, really fresh (best on a plane I’ve had I think) bread was also served. On the return we had Skagen mix (it’s supposed to be shrimps in mayo – this was more likely surimi or something similarly awful), followed by a really (for an airplane) tasty beef stroganoff. The finale was a tasty but very sweet chocolate mousse.

Drinks were sold, and you could get a small bottle of Pommery Champagne for 90 kr, or a glass of nice New Zealand Pinot Noir or Sauvignon Blanc (3 Wooly sheep) for 65 kr. There was also a less expensive wine as well as a couple of drink packages. We opted for the “Bon Voyage” with one bottle of Pommery Champagne, one bottle of whatever wine you prefered as well as snacks and water for 150 sek.

This meant we got pretty much a Intra-Europe business class experience (with more legroom) at the cost of roughly 1000 kr or €100 extra per person. It was surprisingly nice to be honest and for a total of almost 14 hours in the air, quite a bargain according to me. Now they just need to install wifi, and I’d be thrilled to fly Thomas Cook Airlines’ Sun Class again. 🙂

We were most fortunate to have saved up on our Eurobonus (Scandinavian Airline’s frequent flier programme) miles last year, and using them we booked a trip that was really, really something. The trip started in Stockholm and continued on to Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Bangkok and finally Manila, Philippines, where our first stop was. We then returned home by flying from Singapore to Bangkok, Paris and finally Stockholm. Without further elaboration (if you want to find out how to do it, read up on Flyertalk.com, Businessclass.co.uk or Swedish version Businessclass.se) below are the pics and some comments from the flight. Read here about the actual trip to Manila, Boracay and Singapore.

Early morning in Copenhagen, waiting to board Lufthansa’s flight to Frankfurt.

Tasty breakfast in Lufthansa’s business class.

Fast forward to Frankfurt airport and a glass of champagne in the Lufthansa Senator lounge.

Hello spaceship seat. Thai’s A380 first class offer large seats that are converted into a bed when it’s time to pass out after the free-flowing Dom Perignon 2004.

Decent leg room.

Small lounge area for first class passengers. No one really used it except for us.

This friendly guy was head of cabin on both Frankfurt-Bangkok and then Bangkok-Paris on our trip back.

Starters. Cheese and crayfish mini sandwiches. Crayfish were good, bread a bit soggy.

The traditional caviar serving. Very delicious.

Without a doubt is this the best thing I’ve ever had on a plane. Lobster with linguine pasta and cream. The lobster wasn’t even remotely dry, which really surprised me. Washed down with Dom Perignon it was spectacular.

Dessert.

Bed’s made, time to pass out.

After a quick change of planes in Bangkok, we boarded Thai Airways’ Boeing 777 in business class.

Book-the-cook meal of pad krapow gai wasn’t that exciting.

Manila, big city.

After two and half week in Asia it was time to fly back. First up was Singapore Airlines in business class.

Seats.

Singapore Airlines intra Asia business class cabin on Boeing 777-200.

Champagne (the very delicious Charles Heidsieck), water and a Singapore Sling.

Book the cook lobster thermidor.

Decent views.

Thai Airways’ royal first class lounge in Bangkok.

First class passengers have access to a complimentary 1 hour massage at Bangkok Airport. Opted for a one hour foot massage that was great.

The first class lounge have an a la carte restaurant that serves a decent club sandwich, among others.

Cheese platter on the Thai First leg to Paris. In general this flight was less good than the one from Frankfurt to Bangkok. No idea why, but food was mediocre and service not as good.

Coffee and dessert.

Went for the eggs benedict for breakfast. A quite hideous experience with eggs so hard boiled/poached that the yolks were crumbly. The hollandaise was some kind of sauce base with artificial lemon flavour, the bacon were fatty and oily, I guess the English muffin was edible. Barely though. I should’ve understood this though, eggs benedict are easy enough to mess up as it is.

All in all though, it was a fantastic experience and I’m hoping to do this as soon as I’ve saved up on the miles again. Won’t be anytime soon though I’m afraid.