Laid-back day in Copenhagen
Faced with a full day of no plans, we “slept in” this morning…. For us, that’s 7am or so. Went to the hotel brekkie buffet, which was fairly typical Scandinavian fare: cold cuts, cheese, crackers, breads of all kinds, cereal, eggs/bacon/sausage, and those little thin pancakes that are almost thin enough to be crepes. Was pretty good.
After lazing around a bit in the room, we decided to head out to get my Lego passport stamped at the other Lego store in town and to find an antique store Rob had spied on the tour we had with the ship last week.
I should explain: Lego stores will give you a passport that you can have stamped when you visit another store. I’d never seen one, but the employee at the store near Tivoli Gardens gave me one yesterday.
Reminder: you can always click an image to see the whole thing on your screen at once, without needing to scroll
On the way to the antique store, we passed a brilliant example of marketing:
And we also passed the marble church again.
It’s bigger than it looks: check out the people by the door.
It was open this time, so I poked my head in to see. WOW, it’s massive. Have a look at the woman near the altar for scale.
In contrast, Copenhagen Cathedral, which was built in the early 1800s, couldn’t be bothered with all that fancy architecture. It’s basically “stack some big boxes, make a tower on one end.” Someone likely said, “but all the other churches in town are so pretty….” And that was answered with “well, then stick some columns on the front or something.”
On the way back from the antique store, we passed the Round Tower. I didn’t have the good camera on me at the time, so I decided to wait and come back after we’d gone to the hotel.
Saw some Royal Guards as well. They don’t have bears in Denmark, so the hat fur is donated to them by Canada. We should stop that.
Unlike when we were here with the ship on a weekend, it was actually really nice to walk around town today with about 1/4 as many people in the way.
OK. Back to the room, grab the camera, head back out to the Round Tower.
The tower is (not was: *IS*) an astronomy tower with an observatory at the top (I didn’t get into that part). The top has an observatory deck, from which Copenhagen is laid out like a maze.
The most interesting thing to me, though, is how you get up there. The very top has some stairs, but most of the journey is via a spiral ramp made of stones.
If you’ve ever walked on inclined surfaces for long, you know that coming down a steep decline is way harder on you than going up one. The nice thing about the ramp, as opposed to stairs, is that you can hug the inside going up - it’s a 33% gradient around the inside - but on the way down, you can hug the opposite side, where the much larger radius (with the same elevation change) means it’s only a 10% gradient. Easier on the knees!
Kicked back for a bit and started prowling google maps for a restaurant nearby. Booked one place, then read the reviews and cancelled it. Found another place on the map.
I was reading their online menu to Rob and everything was typical Italian until I got to Veal Scallopini in Gorgonzola Sauce.
I knew I didn’t even have to read beyond that. I booked a table.
Turns out, it's a really fun place:
Rob said his veal was even better than expected and my carbonara was stellar. One of the better meals we’ve had this trip!
But we ate too much and didn’t even finish the bottle of wine we bought at the store today.
I know, right?
It’s a Zinfandel from Lodi (California).
I’ve never had a wine from Lodi that I didn’t like and the Zins from there are usually really nice. This was no exception.
What *was* exceptional about it was the price. Why is a bottle of wine so cheap in this country? A Lodi Zin in Canada usually runs around $25+. This was TEN BUCKS. And most of the other wines there were lower than that. WTF? (not that we were upset about it or anything)
The evening was going to be a “turn in early” sort of thing, but at 10pm it sounded like the world was exploding. Turns out that this was the kickoff night to Copenhagen LGBTQ Pride Week, which we saw them setting up for at City Hall Square today
The noise was a big fireworks display right there in the square… which is right around the corner from here. Woooo, it was LOUD.
It went on so long, I finally decided to head out and see if I could get a picture, but of course it all stopped as soon as I got to the corner. Le sigh.
The buildings around the square were pretty, though!