Copenhagen is the new black!

After Kristin and I failed to secure a short trip to Paris for our anniversary due to a recent fire in the chunnel that limited service and drove up train prices we decided to look at other options. I was convinced by a friend that we should visit Copenhagen. We were both unsure until we started to read more about the city and found that we should give it a try. Neither of us had been there, and the tickets and room were dirt cheap, so off we went to Heathrow (at 3:00 am, probably the reason that the tickets were so cheap).

We went there with a few things that we really wanted to see but other than that we were just going to play it by ear. Let me start with the people, first of all they have a greater command of the English language than our own president (but then again so does my 13 month old niece). They are very proud of their city and culture and when prompted will tell you anything they can about the city. They also can't wait for Barack Obama to be elected president. I am not kidding, all of the books in the windows of book stores are about Obama, and we even saw a guy with a shirt that said "Obama is the new black"(I wasn't sure whether to be offended or inspired). 

The second (and in my not so humble opinion, the most important) aspect is the food. Now when I think of Danish food I think of some sort of pickled fish and reindeer meat. This is totally true, they do have tons of pickled herring and reindeer meat, but they also have some of the best restaurants in the world. I'm not kidding, Copenhagen has more Michelin starred restaurants than any other city in the world. Not New York, Paris, Tokyo, London, but Copenhagen friggin Denmark. We didn't eat at any of the Michelin starred restaurants as they are more expensive than our flight and hotel combined, but the small cafe's and couple of nice restaurants that we did eat at were amazing. We didn't have a bad meal the whole time.

The third aspect worth noting is the architecture. Whenever I visit a big city the one thing I usually remember years later is the architecture (actually I remember the food first, but most normal people remember the architecture). Copenhagen is one of the best examples of a city that retains its architectural heritage while bringing in amazing new buildings that are both functional, and easy on the eyes.

The final aspect that I want to tell you about is the music. This city is famous in europe for its vibrant jazz scene. We found music everywhere. First we saw a folk band on the street playing Johnny Cash and singing in Czech, They were amazing. Second we went on a jazz cruise of the city and they even threw in a little Willy Nelson. And on our final night after dinner we headed back to the hotel at about 12:30 am. We heard some live music coming from down the street and went to investigate. There was no sign, and no visible entry. We had a few too many Carlsberg's and decided to venture up the stairs of a building and push open the unmarked door. Inside was a room full of about 50 people, a bar with plenty of booze, and musicians that came from the audience and played some of the best music I've heard in a long time.

So enjoy the pictures and video. 

More Copenhagen Pics

The little jazz lounge we stumbled upon (literally).

The best part about the ICE BAR, other than the fact that it 

was a rip-off tourist trap, is that we were the only ones there.

I do my best dancing when no one's around.

You sit on animal pelts so your ass doesn't freeze. Cool.

Just like the locals do it.

Why yes, those glasses are made of ice.

Great example of old meets new. No, not the buildings, that's 

Cindy and John McCain over there.

The national theatre, yes that's how we spell theater over here.

The rainy jazz boat.

Nyhavn

I don't know who these people are, but they look nice so I 

put them in the blog.

Nyhavn, before the rain.

Man riding horse. 

Woman in front of church. Rain.

Changing of the guard, Danish style.

Copenhagen is the new black!

Us enjoying Nyhaven Street.

We asked the guy to get the beautiful building in the background...

He got the graffiti wall, same thing.

In Copenhagen the city provides bikes. They are free and not

locked up. You can just take one when needed.

Roasted chestnuts are everywhere.

Obama-mania, Danish Style

More pics of Bath & Bristol

Bath from above.

Simon & Karen

Simon & Karen's house in Bristol

Mmm pizza & beer, my favorite type of dessert.

Simon, Nick, Karen. On a bridge.

Bath & Bristol

Ahh, the joys of the 'audio tour'

We're not really models, we just play them on tv.

It was a beautiful day in Bath.

You can actually drink the water from Bath or bath-water as 

I like to call it. It's said to both cause and cure gastroenteritis.

Wait a minute, how does that work?

Kristin begged me to take this picture. I kept saying "Don't you

think it's kind of cheesy?" but I took it anyway, just for her.

This weekend we went to Bath and Bristol to visit some friends of ours. Simon and Karen were kind enough to let us stay at their house in Bristol and drive us all around town including neighboring Bath. We took the bus there which was an interesting journey in itself. The bus was fairly comfortable and took only 1/2 hour longer than the train. The people on the bus were another story all together. We knew it was going to be a long journey when the woman next to us pulled out a grocery bag and tied it to the seat in front of her. The purpose of this bag was to contain the massive amount of trash that she would be producing during the long and arduous 2 hour journey. She started with chips (Which everyone over here calls crisps), after wrestling with the bag for a good 7 minutes she proceeded to pull out each chip and bite it in half. After biting the chip in half she fervently chewed in a circular motion, similar to a camel, mouth wide open, again similar to a camel. If you can visualize the amount of rogue chip matter being violently tossed about the bus cabin, accompanied by the sound of her chewing which was reminiscent of one of those machines that grinds up old computers in order to extract the precious metals from the electronic components, you can only begin to scratch the surface of the first third of our journey. After the chips came an ominous yellow bag with a familiar shape, but larger than I remember. Oh yes, they could only be PEANUT M&M's! No, of course they couldn't be the smaller, quieter variety of nut-less m&m's. They had to be the inordinately large and crunchy peanut variety, and the family size bag to boot. Oh the journey was far from over my friends. After the m&m's this specimen of a woman magically produced an extra large portion of Burger King french fries (which everyone calls chips over here, and freedom fries in certain ignorant parts of middle America). Now with the first two items we covered the audio and visual misery that this woman imposed on the quiet and unsuspecting bus goers. This last item would bring an olfactory element into the mix, she had now touched on 3 of our 5 natural senses. Our bus left at 9am and by now it was about 10:30. This isn't the real problem though. Fries that are 1 &1/2 hours old don't smell particularly good, but they don't really smell that bad either. After glancing over and seeing that both the fries and the bag were translucent I have determined that they were probably from the night before. Now I can tell you that day-old fries do smell particularly bad. So she finished the fries and washed it all down with a liter of Fanta (I'm not kidding). After that she spent the last 10 minutes of the trip speaking to various friends on her cell phone. When I say speaking I mean yelling, and not in English, but in a particularly annoying tone of Welsh, coming to assault us once again in our audio sense. Other than that the trip was great. Enjoy the pictures.