12th August - France - Pre-trip

Sunday and 1 day before the flight. I met up with Ben in Copenhagen. I actually arrived there the day before. I went on vacation on Thursday and spent a couple of days on a road trip meeting up with my girlfriends. After some intensely chill evenings spent with girl talk and chardonnay the more serious mind set is starting to take root.

Ben arrived in Copenhagen in the afternoon, with a daypack and a, somewhere around 110L luggage. He has most of the climbing gear packed. I don't have so much of that as I am more of a relaxed hobby climber. So, I have a harness, shoes, helmet, ATC, a via ferrata set and of course all the regular outdoorsy stuff such as boots and jacket. Ben on the other hand has all the carabiners, ropes, anchors, quick draws, camming devices and so on. His luggage weighs about 10 kg more than mine - all that metal. ;)

Since this is the second via ferrata trip we are on, there is really no stress about it. Last time we actually were on a last minute rope search in Copenhagen the day before the flight. This time, although we again need more rope, we will go shopping for that at Decathlon - our favourite outdoors shop in Europe ;)

Our relaxed evening was spent having coffee at Paludan, my most visited café of all time (since my student days in Copenhagen), while having vegan dessert from Simple Raw, which is a really nice veggie place in the heart of town. Try it out if you're there. The food is delicious...

Dinner was a simple China Box bought while strolling along a rainy Strøget (the main shopping street in the town center). The weather was quite autumn like, even though many still seemed to be clinging on to the hope of the unconventionally warm summer weather to return, walking bare legged and without jackets.
The end of the evening was spent relaxing and WiFi-ing at the hostel before crashing relatively early.