SUMMARY Up and having breakfast early to get to CDG for our flight to Copenhagen. Uneventful trip and super-fast and easy transport into the city center and our hotel. Turns out it’s Pride Week and we are right across the street from the main venue and concert stage! We made plans to spend the evening with a lovely Danish couple (Grith and Jakob) we met in March on our Mekong River cruise. We got together at an outdoor bar on a canal and shared a bottle of wine. Wasps 2, Karen 0! They hurt, they really, really hurt! We took a canal tour on an electric boat and got to see and hear about lots of interesting sites and history. Then a long walk through the pedestrian streets and a great dinner at Price Brothers, a Danish/French fusion restaurant. Nice long walk back to our hotel and Pride central. Happily, the music ceased at midnight! - Karen
DETAIL We’re up at 6:30 per the plan. Scott’s fleece has not magically re-appeared overnight. We splash some water in our faces, scramble to finish packing and head down to breakfast. It’s included in the price of our room, and it’s quality, we’re not going to miss it!
Checking out, we’re warned there may be some smoke outside. Why? There was a car fire outside this morning. It this a common occurrence? Not really.
We retrace our steps for the short walk back to the RER. Along the way we see the burned our shell of the van. It’s a total loss. We buy two tickets to the airport for 12€. Much better than the 63€ at the start of our trip.
The train arrives quickly and there’s plenty of room for us and our luggage. It’s a smooth, quiet ride to the airport. We read that carryon on this airline is limited to 8kg. We ask an airline employee, pointing to our luggage, asking “May we take this aboard?” Sure! (There’s no mention of its 18kg heft).
Going through security Scott forgets to remove the mini iPad from his pack. The punishment? Each and every item is taken out and painstakingly inspected, with some of it being tested for explosive material residue. Not surprisingly none is found.
Karen buys a sandwiches for the flight. We’re leaving at 11 and getting in close to one. We figure we’ll be hungry. We’re in seat’s 2D and 2F, which is exciting for us. We should be among the first off the plane. In boarding they are smart and load the back of the plane first. Makes sense. We forget this means all of the overhead compartments will be taken by the time we board, and sure enough it is. We end up putting our two bags back around row 10. Our seats are bulkhead seats, so everything, including daypacks, need to be up to. Argh.
At cruising altitude we relocate further back on the plane to more easily reclaim our luggage when deplaning. We had been in bulkhead seats, towards the front where the give out food and drink to the premium paying clients. Moving back to row 10 temporarily throws the crew for a loop.
The food came in a compostable box with wooden knife/fork/spoon in a sealed compostable sleeve. The drink (juice of apple, elderberry and ginger) comes in a sealed cylinder printed with instructions on how to dispose of the container (compost) and the pull tab (metal).
We’d forgotten we’d be fed, so Karen had purchased a sandwich (mostly bread). This came after our breakfast of mostly bread. And now “Lunch 2”, courtesy of SAS. Lunch 2 is… yes… mostly bread. Oh, well.
Descending into Copenhagen we see lots of water and lots of farmland. As the country is known for being islands, shoreline, and dairy farms, so we guess that makes sense. Once again there is sunshine and blue sky. High today was supposed to be around 71°. It’s midday (1pm daylight time) but posts have a marked shadow. You know you’re fairly far north when…
It’s a quick train ride from the airport to Central Copenhagen. There are helpful agents stationed by the ground transportation ticket kiosks, ready to answer any questions. Off the train it’s a short walk around Tivoli garden to our hotel, The Square Hotel. It’s called that because it’s on the main square. Now that’s taken over by stages and fences and the like for Copenhagen’s Pride Celebration. Given how many people are celebrating the Danes are very proud!
We’re informed our room is not ready yet and we’re to come back in an hour. I grab a beer and Karen Calls our friends. We will meet them at 3:30.
It’s 71° and sunny with beautiful blue sky. A guy on the train said it’s been rainy and cool for the past many weeks, so the locals are thrilled by this weather.
After a quick 20 minute walk, down a long, wide pedestrians-only promenade we find our meeting place and re-unite with Grith and Jakob, whom we’d met on a small cruise in Cambodia/Vietnam on the Mekong river. We have glasses of wine, then a bottle of wine. Their daughter, Mathilde, joins us. We catch up and talk about how fun Copenhagen is. Karen got her ring finger and wrist stung by a wasp and takes off her wedding ring. Hopefully this isn’t a sign (wink). Truthfully, she was worried about swelling.
A few steps away we climb into a small boat with a half dozen other riders and a capitan, Dagmar. She’s entertaining, funny, knowledgeable, and loves her city and country. She pilots the boat expertly down the canals and into the (slightly more) open water. There are other boats of varying size also on the water. Some with a foursome with a picnic and some with scores of revelers with opera singers putting on performances. Dagmar is driving, and avoiding the other boats, and explaining to us the history of Copenhagen and these waterways.
We’re initially on a canal, that was dug. Later we’re on a water way formed by filling in the land from either side. There’s a huge building off in the distance spewing out white steam which quickly dissipates. We learn it’s an incinerator for burnable waste. It’s also an incredibly tall rock climbing wall and a year-round artificial ski run. There’s a “Marble” church only so named because the king really, really wanted a marble church, not realizing that the mechanics of the weight of the marble, and the tall roofs, didn’t mesh. The builders and king’s handlers put him off long enough that it never really was built of marble, but… to this day it’s called “The Marble Church”.
There’s a “Kissing Bridge”, so named because the two sides come together and kiss in the middle. When boats need to pass the two sides retract and let the vessel glide by.
We see old torpedo buildings and facilities for refurbishing canons, all of which are now condominiums, apartments, or space for creatives. 25% of all new living spaces need to be affordable units, which everyone, reportedly, is happy with. We learn how all of these torpedo and canon buildings are there because back in the day Denmark had one of the four most powerful navies in the world, along with the UK, Spain, and the Netherlands. Who knew?
There’s the new Opera house with a long diving board looking roof, that has been used for Cliff Diving World Series three times between 2013 and 2016. It’s sponsored by Red Bull, a company seemingly not known for caring that much about human life.
We see the Maersk building, the global container shipping company. Their building, not surprisingly, looks a bit like a bunch of containers stacked one on top of the other. Their logo, including a seven pointed white star on a blue background, is for the seven continents between which they ship good.
We have dinner at a restaurant owned by Adam Price who also is one of the three writers of the TV show Danish TV show Borgen. If you haven’t seen it, you should, it’s great. Dinner was delicious, too. It wasn’t cheap, but very well done and tasty.
We walk back to our hotel with Grith and Jakob, which was good as my phone battery was dead. We see where Jakob studied at university. We see the observatory (the round tower) where the king could ride in his coach, drawn by horses, round and round to the top of the tower. He didn’t want to have to walk.
We see the pride festival going on at 11 o’clock at night with its throngs of people, bright flashing lights, and loud, thumping music.
We say our good nights and promise to meet up on the other side of the Atlantic next year. Back to our hotel the windows do little to block the noise. Neither do ear plugs. At 11pm Karen calls the front desk to inquire if there’s a time the festival is required to be silent. Midnight! yay, not that far off. And sure enough, at midnight, like clockwork, it goes silent. Soon the ringing in our ears will stop, too. (We hope).
Photos
We'd been warned there might be smoke hanging around due to a vehicle fire. It looks like it was fully engulfed.
Our view of the Parthenon on our walk to the RER to get to Charles de Gaulle airport.
Our inflight lunch. Most of the packing is also edible, or at least compostable.
Our hotel let's us know it's going to be loud. They are right! Very proud people.
The view of the festival from our room. That's the music stage. Whoops!
Dagmar our boat captain and guide for our canal tour.
In an adjacent boat we could hear some lovely opera, a part of that festival also going on.
Grith, a friend we made when sailing on the Mekong River, our host on this canal tour.
Jakob, her husband.
The royal yacht. It's not always in port, so we were lucky.
A submarine in the foreground. In the background is an incinerator for safely combustible refuse, which is also a climbing wall and ski run.
The Copenhagen Opera House, which Red Bull has used as a high diving platform three times so far. Yikes!
Time for bed and time to say good-bye and thanks to Grith and Jakob.
Kommentare