Day 173: Getting to Know Copenhagen, A Very Cool City
Our hotel room is totally ridiculous. Even Willa said, “This morning at 7 I got up to go to the bathroom, and when I walked back into my room, it was like [overly dramatic, unironic storytelling voice] tall WIIINDows, beautiful LAMPS, elegant CURtains….like a PALACE!”
View from our room:
Don’t get used to it, kid.
After a great breakfast we did an abbreviated school because we got picked up by our tour guide Sine at 11:30.
Sine (SEE-nuh) is a 47-year-old Dane with her own tourism company. She has two teenage kids and a “Polish marriage,” which is what the Danes call a common-law marriage.
She is lively, likeable and super clear in her explanations, so we immediately liked her (we’ve had a looooooot of windbag guides this year).
Our plan was a four-hour tour, hitting off-the-beaten-path neighborhoods for a look at where/how Danes live — and eating some food along the way.
Our first stop was Nørrebro, a fairly recently gentrified neighborhood filled with charming coffee shops, cafes, bakeries, and design shops.
We stopped at Istid, an ice cream shop known for its nitrogen process.
The lady who worked there took our flavors, poured cream from charming little pitchers into mixers, then as they were swirling, she added nitrogen for a full-on Halloween witch’s cauldron effect. It froze the cream immediately and we ate it on the spot.
Willa goes, “Mom, is nitrogen one of the e….eh….elll…..hmm. I learned about it on the Marie Curie episode of ‘The Who Was? Show.’ Elements?”
Amazing!
We wandered down the Jaegersborggade, a quiet, beautiful, gem of a neighborhood-y street til we hit the Assistens Cemetary, final resting place of many prominent Danes (300k to be exact), including Hans Christian Andersen.
While we walked we talked about the most famous Danes, and our guide reminded us/enlightened us about:
- Hans Christian Andersen (the most famous, she said)
- Game of Thrones characters Euron Greyjoy and Jaime Lannister (I had no idea the latter was not a Brit)
- Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich
- Supermodel Helena Christiansen
- Actor Viggo Mortensen
Our guide also said yuppies wander the cemetery looking for baby names. Glad to hear the Danes are on to the trend of naming babies old-timey names like the Americans (it’s a thing in France too).
From there we went to Christianshavn, an area of small islands known for its Amsterdam-ish canals lined with houseboats and newly created “urban beach” residential/public areas along the water.
We went to Copenhagen Street Food, a series of containers-turned-food stalls serving up everything from cocktails to American BBQ to Indian. We chose a place serving traditional Smorrebrod aka open-faced sandwiches. We tried herring, veggie, fried fish and pork tenderloin, all on rye. We also had some beers.
The area was sunny and filled with picnic tables — and it was empty (we’d learn the following night just how packed it could get here!).
Next stop: The Latin Quarter, Copenhagen’s once-home to the University of Copenhagen. Charming tiny streets, cobblestones, little shops, parks, etc. We stopped at our guide’s favorite independent bakery, Sankt Peders Bageri. We ordered some over-the-top decadent/delicious cinnamon rolls with frosting and enjoyed them on the couches inside the shop.
Danishes…not just a clever name!
That afternoon Lila and Teddy took the kids to a playground near Nyhavn while I walked over to the Danish Design Museum.
Lovely walk.
There was a lot of cool stuff there.
Including things that remind you that once-breakthrough Danish design is totally ubiquitous now simply because it was so well designed. Like this familiar item:
Dinner that night was at MASH — Modern American Steak House. Teddy and I drank a Geranium Gin with tonic and Elderflower.
We had a beautiful post-dinner stroll along the Nyhavn canal area.
Misc.
- Beepaw Brendan might get a bad rap for his dislike of traveling, but as a tourist, he’s a very curious fellow, asking a million questions and listening intently.
- Danes are graduating from high school this week, and the end-of-school tradition is a fun/funny one:
- High school is basically 10th-12th grade, and the same 25 kids are in the same homeroom class for all subjects for all three straight years. After their graduation ceremony this week, each class of 25 kids rents a party bus or truck and rides it around the city, stopping at each family’s home for a toast. They start at noon and end at midnight. That’s a lot of cocktails. Between each stop they cruise the streets. The trucks were ubiquitous all day — open-air, blasting dance music, high schoolers dancing on the back of trucks and waving and screaming and cheering and drinking beers and dancing and being applauded by the whole city. It made us smile/laugh every time once went by (and there are 50k grads every year, so it’s a lot of buses).
- We learned that getting a gin on ice with a separate bottle of tonic delivered to you is called “The perfect pour.” As in, you decide how much tonic you want (I *hate* too much tonic).
- The Danes, who really love their leisure time, call Thursday “little Friday.”
- We are all about Hygge.
