(københavn day two)
This is the view outside our bedroom window. We are in the Latin Quarter.
This is the view from our living room.
And this is the living room I’ve been blogging in. Last night Kay woke up with a fever from teething so I didn’t get much sleep between feeding and comforting her. I had a feeling that today would run the risk of having me get sick. But on the bright side I finished yesterdays blog post.
So not only do things close early in Denmark, they also open pretty late. We slept in until about 8:30 am and then decided to walk to a shopping mall so that I could get a warmer coat and some new pants. We decided to head to the Dagbehandingen Frederiksberg Centeret. This was a mall advertised on the train from the airport as one of nicest malls in Europe.
Some of you may know that Ben and I have not been able to agree on a style of silverware for 8 years! We couldn’t agree on a set for our wedding registry and decided to forgo nice silverware until we find something that we both like. Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that we found something in Denmark. We really liked the silverware our host had and messaged her to find out where we could buy it. The mall happens to have a Bahne store so hopefully our luck will hold because they are out of stock online.
We walked through the park and ran into this buildings. Still not sure what institution this is but the imagery suggests women’s empowerment?
Another set of beautiful doors. The colors didn’t come out quite right but I love the wood and ironwork together.
Love the detailing on the rail, the rust weathered gryphons could be found along the entire stretch of this building each door boasting the same rails for much of the block.
Love this spiral staircase, although, I doubt it is in use since the plants have overtaken the outside of the building.
This is the school of Human Engineering building. Denmark manages to quite beautifully throw in modern buildings alongside the historical ones. It never look jarring.
This little flower child is always so surprised and happy to find “‘bootiful’ flowers, Momma!”
And don’t forget to acknowledge the daisies. She’s amazing in her ability to focus on details and gets really upset when you try to rush by or not give her findings the time of day. It’s made us slow down and appreciate what we can observe. It has turned into somewhat of a game to see what cool things we can find on our walks.
Kay is not happy that we can’t eat the berries. Google had us walk through this amazing pedestrian and bicycle only path that lasted for a couple of kilometers. It was really cool to just feel the city disappear. Without cars nearby the city is quieter, the walk is surrounded by groves of trees and you feel like you are on a hike rather than in the middle of an urban area.
We saw a lot of different kinds of berries. Not sure if they are edible but we decided not to risk finding out the hard way.
Still on this lovely little path. Rae loved disappearing among the branches and calling out to come find her.
Still on the path but there was a break in the trees and these buildings, part of Copenhagen University, just popped up along our walk.
Here the pedestrian path ends and joins a street before it resumes later down the lane.
This is the cyclist portion of the no car zone.
We finally made it to the shopping center. Unfortunately, Bahne didn’t have our silverware in stock in the store either. I supposed it as too good to be true to actually find silverware after 8 years, to have it be on sale and in stock. But it gives me hope that we will find something eventually.
As we walked around the mall a little bit, I started to feel feverish so we stopped by Joe & The Juice to finally get something to drink. Kay stole my drink and it was a very cute battle to convince her to give it back.
Rae and Kay kept entertained while I went into every single clothing store trying to find a coat. Keep in mind that it is summer in Copenhagen, but with the temperature different between here and New York I as actually very cold any time we were not in direct sun. But my options seemed to be fleece or artic winter coats. Luckily I did find something in the end.
We joked that she should put the backpack on, and she thought we were serious. She was very disappointed that it was too big to carry.
New coat and jeans worn straight out of the store only to have me shaking from fever and chills. Ben ran to the store in the mall and I kid you not they were out of fever reducers. How can a pharmacy be out of NSAIDs? I started to sob laugh, earning a concerned look from Ben who decided to try one more store on the second level. In the end I did get my Ibuprofen but not before I got a good laugh at the absurdity of everything that has gone wrong on this trip. I doubt we will forget this one any time soon.
From the mall we decided to take the Metro to go on a boat tour of the canals. We got off at Kogens Nytrov and started to head towards to docks. We noticed a money exchange booth and finally got some Danish Krones just in time to buy Ben an amazing Copenhagen shirt with a bicycle on it. For those of you who know me, I hate tourists shirts so this one was pretty special for me to recommend it.
We continued to meander along Strøget, a street full of shops and performers. You see them in many European cities, this one reminded me of Dublin’s Gafton Street. Free ice cream samples were being handed out so I got to play cool mom while only exposing my kid to about a tablespoon of ice cream.
At a intersection we came across this lovely plaza, reminding me of Northern Italy. It was complete with fountain, live music and cafes along the squares’ perimeter, perfect for people watching.
Here is the fountain. It’s actually more impressive in person, but my iPhone camera isn’t quite able to get the dimensions.
A panoramic of the square.
We ran into a Danish hot dog stand after the square and decided to grab a snack before heading on the boat tour. Everyone love it. The girls had a plain one, while Ben and I had a traditional Danish dog complete with mustard, ketchup, onions, fried onions and pickles.
The view behind our bench.
As we crossed the next intersection, I realized we were back into our neighborhood as we were standing in the same place we had dinner the night before. Ben was so confused. He kept saying it was impossible. But I was adamant that this is the same square. It’s unlikely that there is a second square with the exact same burger places, Mexican restaurant and fountain in Copenhagen. Besides, I’d heard that Copenhagen is relatively small and if you are ambitious can be covered more or less in a day.
As we were standing debating a bee flew up to Rae. I covered her hand so she wouldn’t swat it away. Ben, not understanding, moved and she managed to free her hand just as the bee moved near her eye, so she cupped it to protect herself. Unfortunately she managed to cup the bee to her face and got stung just below her eye. We were a little nervous because Rae had been stung one other time in her life, at the Bronx Zoo, and her fingers had actually swollen significantly. As her eye started to swell I became really concerned that she may be allergic like I am. In the end it calmed down but it was a very stressful situation.
Poor Rae was inconsolable. For some reason her right cheek just keeps being abused. A few months ago she got hit in the face at daycare with a dinosaur and it left a really deep bruise, that literally just went away after months. Now she has a pink and purple eye in the same place. After calming her down we bribed her with ice cream. Just as we were going to buy some a gelato place was offering free samples, so once again I got Rae a free sample. She got minimal sugar but was happy.
After dealing with the minor emergency, Ben realized that we had walked the wrong way. We decided to walk back down to the docks. What had taken us maybe 20-30 minutes to meander down, took less than 10 minutes to actually walk down with purpose, so our day wasn’t particularly derailed.
Copenhagen recently celebrated it 850th birthday, and in honor of the occasion, locals were asked to rate the best things about Copenhagen that make it Copenhagen. They narrowed it down to 10. My favorite was Cykelflirten. What a good word. More flirting while cycling would reduce road rage, I think.
We finally made it to the Canal Tour. We sat all the way in the back with another family, from Richmond, who also had a three year old and a one year old. Instantly bonding over the crazy ambitious life of traveling with toddlers, we ended up exploring Copenhagen with them and even made plans to visit the Tivoli Gardens together the next day.
All those life jackets. Not sure why they were stuck into former windows, but it looked cool. Also note how there is no rail on the dock… every… anywhere in Copenhagen. As a result some of our more ambitious touristy items got eliminated from our to see list because we just don’t want to tempt fate. Like there are permanent trampolines along the warf in Copenhagen, but there are not rails…. It’s hard enough getting Rae and Kay to be safe without the added pressure of them running away from us and falling into the canals.
These houses were for sailors, and the women of the night who would visit them once long ago.
The tour was amazing! Just the thing we needed. Rae loves boats, I needed to sit, and Kay needed to nurse. It gave us a little over an hour to just enjoy the town. The views were beautiful. The guide was a little hard to understand. She spoke in English and Danish in the same tone without pause, so when she switched languages you didn’t realize it until all of a sudden you couldn’t understand what she was saying. As a result a lot of the information was missed. Either we thought she was still speaking in Danish and didn’t hear the beginning, or she stopped speaking in English and we hadn’t noticed.
This is the Shakespeare theater. Again, note the lack of guard rails.
The opera house with our squinty smiles.
This used to be a torpedo factory but was remade into glass apartments. Seriously one of the most beautiful things I have seen. Wish we could afford it, but it’s one of the priciest listings in Copenhagen. To the right, the black buildings, used to house boats that could be just tugged into the water at a moments notice during WWII, I believe. They have since been decommissioned and I can’t figure out if they are private homes or restaurant/offices.
This is a brand new energy facility that makes energy from waste. Like other Nordic countries, Denmark imports waste to make energy because they don’t have enough waste created by their population alone. The plant isn’t open yet so the guide wasn’t sure what they were testing in order for us to see smoke.
This is the royal yacht, the royal family evidently takes it around Denmark. This picture doesn’t quite capture how decadent and golden the boat is.
This is an active military island, the canons are fired at dawn and dusk every day. We have yet to hear them despite not being that far, so they must not be that loud.
This is the infamous Copenhagen Mermaid statue. Evidently she is painted monthly, and was recently replaced as her arms had gone missing.
Not sure what this is, but it’s pretty.
Draw bridge, we got to go across and then could see it being lowered in time to watch the cyclists and pedestrians cross.
The space between the boat and the bridges we crossed under was tiny. Some of them you could reach up and touch the bridge.
Church of Our Savior has an interesting spiral staircase on the outside of the building that you can go up. 400 steps.
I’m actually touching the bridge.
This makes me want a colorful home and a tiny boat.
Interesting bridge in front of the Black Diamond, a library.
Don’t remember what this building was, but there is finally a guardrail to be found. To be fair it’s a bridge.
The Børsen was the stock exchange of 17th century Copenhagen. The spire is made up of dragon tails representing the union of Nordic countries.
Rae finally got some much needed Momma time. And by the time the boat tour was over her eye had come down.
We ended back at the same dock. I have to say the canals are rather narrow and our driver was incredibly skilled at maneuvering the rather large boat.
We had some time to kill before dinner. Ben wanted to go to Honey because it researching Copenhagen it became evident that the city is know for it’s amazing food. So he looked into tasty places that were also family friendly.
Since we had an hour and a half we thought we’d go home and drop off some of our stuff before we turned around and grabbed dinner. As we were walking along, a tourist bumped into Rae and knocked her down. She fell really hard and hit her forehead on the pavement. Poor little girl, our misadventures continue but today Rae is getting all the bad luck.
Love these car free zones.
We made it to Honey with time to spare. We wanted to go to dinner right as the restaurant opened in an effort to avoid exposing Copenhagen’s patrons to cranky jet lagged toddlers. We spent 15 minutes chasing each other while we waiting to be seated in an effort to wear the kids out.
Rae was sneaky and thought we wouldn’t be able to find her.
Kay enjoying some amazing bread. Also have you ever noticed in New York how restaurants will give you nice bread but frozen butter? Honey gave us whipped butter with buttermilk and it was delicious. We got an entire loaf and ate the whole thing.
Honey exceeded our expecations. The food was amazing. We had the restaurant to ourselves for a good 45 minutes and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. The kids had cod, chicken confit with fresh slightly pan fried peas and roasted potatoes in a sauce. It was so good we couldn’t help helping them out a bit. The confit was so good I’ve sworn off fried chicken forever. Nothing can compare to how crispy and juicy the chicken was
For ourselves we did the Full Honey for the Money experience so we got three appetizers and two main courses with soft serve for dessert. Everything was so delicious. We highly recommend this place even if you aren’t traveling with kids. In fact we were the only family in the restaurant for the majority of our stay.
Unfortunately, after our appetizers there was a bit of a lull before we got our entrees and in that time I went from feeling fine to feeling awful. The Ibuprofen must have worn off because I could barely stop shaking. Kay Kay was getting fussy and one gentlemen in particular was giving us a bit of the evil eye. So we got our last entree and the soft serve to go. While we waited for the restaurant to pack up our items, I took Kay outside and being in the fresh air helped me a lot.
When Ben and Rae joined us, I felt strong enough to take Rae to the playground like we promised. We walked over to Kogens Have gardens. I love that they have bike parking. What amazes me most is that I haven’t seen a lot of bikes locked up. Most of them are just left there free standing. It’s mind boggling.
Here is the playground. We stayed for a bit and packed up once Kay started to eat sand.
This is the Rosenborg Castle, we plan on going there on Thursday. The lighting was difficult, as it became dusk, Copenhagen’s sky turned white almost. But it was lovely, even if the picture doesn’t adequately capture it. I love this couple in front of the castle. The park was filled with people and their bikes nearby. A big difference from NYC, you can see people smoking, drinking openly. We even passed groups playing music from speakers as if the park was their own personal concert. It was really cool to see so many locals just enjoying their green spaces.
Not sure what this building connects but it looks cool.
This library is near our apartment. I wouldn’t mind studying there. Maybe in another life.
And that was day two. The girls were worn out by the time we got home. They went to bed very quickly. I came down with my fever with a vengeance so I went to bed early and decided I would write up the blog in the morning.
Mapped Out 