My first two days had some added adventure. My bag, as well as maybe a
dozen others, were lost by the airline. And I had to get a key to an apartment
I am sharing in Sopot with Justin Grunewald for the week.
After the long day of
travel, it was getting dark as we arrived at the hotel so Gabriele and Justin
went for a run while I headed out, directions in hand, to get the apartment key.
The directions given me turned out to be wrong and after over an hour of
walking, being befriended by a doorman of a building and a woman walking her
dog, I found the place - closed and dark.
So I headed back to the hotel, on a
more direct route, to strategize over dinner and beers. The walk was actually
very pleasant since the temperature was in the 40s and the part of town I walked
through reminded me of Kenwood in Minneapolis, with many very large, beautiful
old homes and lots of huge trees.
Gabriele contacted her agent Paul Doyle, who
had acquired the apartment for us, and he contacted the person with the key, who
had "stepped out" for awhile. Thus, after dinner I took a taxi, which are cheap
and plentiful throughout the city, back to the place, got the key, returned to
the hotel to pick up Justin, taxied to the apartment and collapsed into
bed.
The agenda for day two was: coffee, get my bag, get a coaching credential.
This doesn't sound like much but it took nearly all day. The day started late
due to bad on-and-off sleep. Our apartment is also a ways out with no shops or
stores around it, and no readily available transportation.
So we began our
quest for coffee on foot, eventually landing in a quaint restaurant where the
coffee was small and the breakfast sandwiches large. Further exploration,
however, brought us to an actual coffee shop on a street that has been turned
into a walking mall with a lot of shops and restaurants. In one direction the
street rises up a hill to a university. In the other direction it ends at a
long pier that extends out into the Baltic Sea over a quarter mile.
Fully caffeinated, I headed to the credentialing hotel. I had been unable
to get the credential the day before, but the wrinkle had been ironed out and it
went smoothly this time. The walk to the athlete's hotel was another half mile,
pushing my total for the day to over two miles. But it was worth it because
shortly after I got there, both Heather and my bag arrived. We had a nice
dinner and all seemed well with the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment