Copenhagen

It's true, Copenhagen is pretty wonderful!  Clean, friendly and full of Danes.

This trip was a quick jaunt over to the continent to visit Laura's Dad
Brian.  He was visiting some companies in Slovakia, Denmark and
elsewhere on one of his frequent work trips to far flung locations
around the world.  We figured we'd take advantage of his invitation to
stay with him in his room at the Hilton.  Conveniently located, it was
actually physically attached to the airport, and the rooms are some of
the nicest in Copenhagen.

Yes, they left a bottle of wine, fruit and some chocolates for him. 
Hows that for service!?

The Hilton had a lounge up on the top floor for special "Gold
Members", so of course Brian was able to get us into the lounge for
full buffet breakfast, and oysters, shrimp and wine for after supper
snacks.

It seems as though nice elite lounges follow Brian wherever he travels
(or is it the other way around?).  But we certainly like the way he
travels.

We left London early Saturday morning, and arrived a little after 9am.
 Brian met us at the airport and we eventually took the train into
downtown Copenhagen.  Where we unacclimatized Londoners braced ourselves
for the cold weather (-7 C).


The first thing we did was go into Copenhagen's city hall (of sorts)
and wandered through a Scandinavian art show.  There was a lot of
Icelandic art, so I snapped some shots of the exhibits.

One thing about Scandinavian countries, their artists are weird. 
Wildly creative, but weird.  Later on in the weekend, we stumbled upon
another contemporary art show in another part of the city.  We saw
everything from a room with a floor covered in Styrofoam, to a tennis
ball launcher shooting oranges onto a canvas awning, where the oranges
fell into a orange juice squeezer.  It was fun to see, and the juice
was yummy!

Copenhagen has an impressive network of strictly pedestrian streets
that criss-cross the city.  We walked for hours and went from large
square to large square taking in the sights.


We walked up to the top of a church that was rather unique, in that it 
had a road that wound it's way up to the top!

Apparently the Czar of Russia went up to the top of it in a horse and 
carriage.  These days they have yearly unicycle races up and down the 
road.  Danes gotta love'em.

The top had a great view of the city.


We went to some of the Royal palaces and saw furry-hat'ed guards doing
their rounds.  They carried fully capable looking machines, that were
oddly enough fixed with bayonets.


Then it was down to the church where the Danish Monarchy do their
churching.  It was warm and quiet, so we sat for awhile before heading
off to buy ourselves some chocolate.


Incidentally, things in Copenhagen are not cheap.  The currency is the
Danish Krone and the conversion works out to be about 10 Krones to a
pound, or 5 Krones to $1CAD.  Entrance into museums were around 40
Krones, and bus tickets were about 18 Krones.  We didn't need to eat
out much because we had the Hilton lounge waiting for us back at the
hotel.  I however could not resist these odd hot dogs that came inside
of hollowed out baguettes.  They'd toast the baguette then fill them
up with ketchup and mustard and shove the hot dog into it.  Pure
brilliance!  No mess, and its all in a convenient yummy package.


We walked past Trivoli, a famous amusement park in the middle of
Copenhagen that allegedly inspired Walt Disney to build Disneyland.


Despite the cold temperatures and snow on the ground, the Danes still
cycle everywhere!  Just like Holland, there are bicycle lanes all over
the city, and bikes seem to be the main mode of transportation.


Then we went off to a Design Museum.  I had no idea what to expect
from a Design Museum, but I was not disappointed.  The Danish
out-there'edness came through once again.

Yes, that's a fluffy Volkswagen.

There was also an amazing display that brought out the idea of
societal sustainability.  It was in the form of a super-market where
you could buy things that would be good for people and the earth.  You
could buy paint cans of "holistic thinking" cans of "inner calmness"
pill bottles of "pollution prevention".  You come out wanting to buy
everything, but realizing it's not all that easy.  An ironic prod at
commerce culture.


Immediately afterwards, we needed something entirely antipodal, so we
went on a tour at the Carlsberg/Tuborg brewery!

We wandered through displays discussing the history of the brewery and
followed the company as it grew through the years since it started in
the 1800s.

Interestingly enough, before WWII, Carlsberg's official symbol was a
swastica.  I presume it didn't have the same negative connotations
back then.


Then it was up to the bar to have the two pints included in our admission price.

Between the three of us, we got to try a good cross section of their
premium beers.  They were pretty yummy.  The Danes also know their
beers!

After the brewery tour, we checked out from the Hilton and checked in
at the airport for our flights.  Laura and I were heading back to
London, and Brian was taking a little turbo-prop to another small city
in Denmark.  He gave us tour of Copenhagen's award winning airport. 
Because he could only bring one guest into the lounge, he and Laura
went in, while I sat outside looking longingly at the lounge doors. 
But Laura was nice enough to bring me out some buns and cookies.

We flew in an Airbus MD-81, that has the two jet engines immediately
outside of the passenger compartment windows at the back of the plane.
 Brian said, "Make sure you don't get the seats at the back of the
plane, because their terribly noisey".  We did self check-in very
early and it automatically selected our seats, so I assumed that we
would get seats fairly close to the front of the plane.

Nope.  We had a nice window view of a 6000 horse power turbine engine
8 inches from our heads.  And indeed, it was both noisy and the
vibrations made our teeth rattle something feirce.  But it wasn't too
bad, and we were back home before too late.

Lots of fun, it's always nice to see Brian, and we look forward to
mooching his hotel room at the next opportunity.

Here are all the pictures!

This weekend we're off to Dublin for St. Patrick's day.