The Poetry of Silence: Conquering Copenhagen

Well, we think we might have the picture issue sorted out, so we figured it's time to update you about our trip to Copenhagen.

Don't worry, it won't be as detailed as our Italian trip, mostly because we stayed in one city and we were there for half of the time.

Our flight left Heathrow at 12:30, we had a fairly uneventful trip to the airport, and were able to board the plane just fine. The flight is only 1.5 hours from London to Copenhagen, so before we knew it, we'd landed. The airport in Copenhagen has been voted the best airport in Europe. And I could see why, it's very clean, nicely decorated and the staff are all friendly.

One unfortunate thing about this flight was that they didn't put our stroller on the plane with us (more often than not, they let you store it in the overhead compartment), it had to be sent down to where the rest of the baggage resided. They did let us take it all the way to the gate however. But with it being in baggage, it meant we didn't have it at the gate when we landed, we had to pick it up with our suitcase.

It isn't very fun carrying Amelia around, she's heavy, very squirmy. But we survived, thankfully passport control was very quick. We were able to get to baggage claim and pick up our suitcase without any problems. Unfortunately we couldn't find our stroller. It didn't come off with the rest of the luggage and we were a little confused. Finally after all the bags had been offloaded from the plane Matt went to ask about our stroller. He had the easy job. Mine was to prevent Amelia from getting run over by people with their baggage trolleys and whatnot. I was trying to keep an eye on our luggage and her at the same time. She thought it was a pretty fun game to race away from me and make me chase her (all the while I'm trying to make sure no one steals our stuff).

After being told the wrong claim area twice, Matt was finally able to locate our stroller and we headed off. The directions the hotel gave us stated that the easiest (and cheapest) way to get there would be to take the metro. So we did. It is a very pleasant metro and very clean and bright especially compared to the tube. We got off the metro at the right stop and were finally able to get a good look at Copenhagen. It is a very pretty city. It first struck me that it looked a lot like Amsterdam. It has the same kind of architecture, bikes everywhere and canals running through the city.

We started the 10 minute walk or so to our hotel, but ooohed and ahhhed the entire way. Our plan was to check in and try to get Amelia to take her afternoon nap. Our hotel was very nice. And our room was huge, especially by European standards. It opened into a long(ish) hallway which led into the room itself. It was on the ground floor and tucked away, I'm pretty sure they try to put most people with children in that room. We liked it because we could put Amelia's cot at the far end of the hall (by the door) and still be able to sit on our bed and keep a little light on and read. That was a very big improvement over hiding in the bathroom reading in a tiny hotel room in Italy.

Amelia was a champ, we put her in the cot and she fell right asleep. Matt and I just hung out and unpacked quietly while we waited for her to wake up. Once she did, we headed out to explore our little neck of the woods. Right by our hotel is an area called Nyhaven. It's boarded by a long canal which has tons of restaurants beside it, people would eat either inside, or under a canopy and on the other side of the walk way, other people would sit on the curb by the canal and drink and socialize, it was obviously a pretty popular hangout.

We wandered around for a bit, the canal led right to the ocean so we headed down there and enjoyed looking at all the giant battleships (still active). It was a very pleasant evening. We also looked for a place to eat, but to our dismay, Copenhagen is even more expensive than London when it comes to eating out. We looked for something that wasn't too pricey and eventually decided to head back to the hotel and order room service. This was good for a couple of reasons, first Amelia was starting to get a little fussy and second, when we'd looked at the prices earlier in the hotel, we realized that it was actually cheaper than the prices we'd been seeing on our walk.

So back we went, and ordered in. The food was really, really good. After our yummy feast we all headed to bed, eager to start exploring the city in earnest the next day.

Saturday:

After our fantastic breakfast buffet, we suited up and were ready to explore. Saturday started out very gray. We'd checked the weather forecast before flying out and knew that rain had been predicted. So like the good Londoners we are, we came prepared. We had Amelia's rain cover for her stroller as well as our umbrellas and jackets. That morning we decided that we'd take the 'hop on, hop off' bus. If you remember, we did that in Italy and it was a huge success. Luckily (or not, since we planned it that way) there was a stop fairly close to our hotel. We got there and purchased our tickets and hopped on. We learned a few things that day about these buses as well as Copenhagen. First off, Copenhagen is really small, it doesn't really need the hop on, hop off. Secondly, the hop on/off buses there were very poorly run. So we don't recommend using them. They were kind of a waste of our money.

However, we didn't know that when we boarded. So off we went. After a few snags of the bus pulling into a stop and stopping and us having to get off and take another one (it wasn't broken, but that's just how they operated) we were able to ride the entire route. Because of the dark clouds, the cover of the bus was on up top, so we rode on the bottom part. Amelia was very good. She loved looking out of the windows at the sights. As we rode, Matt and I made mental notes of places we'd like to come back and visit. The purpose of this first ride was to purely get a lay of the land and see what was available.

After we'd completed the circuit, we set out to look for somewhere to eat lunch. We decided on hot dogs. There are hot dog stands everywhere in Scandinavian countries (so Matt tells me), I know they were in Iceland, though I'm not sure if that's considered Scandinavian. Anyway, I can't really get a good hot dog here in London, so I didn't mind at all. We purchased our hot dogs and discussed what we wanted to do that afternoon/evening.

We decided we'd walk to Amalienborg Palace, partly because it was close to our hotel and partly because we liked that the name was close to Amelia's and thought it'd be fun to get a t-shirt with it or something. So we put Mia down for her afternoon nap and settled in with our books that we'd brought. After awhile Matt decided to check the opening hours of the palace and got on his computer (we'd taken it because the hotel offered free wi fi). As he was searching he came across a very legitimate looking link and as you all know, it was attached to a very nasty virus which crashed his computer. We couldn't even get it to boot up or anything. It was not cool.

And in addition to that, the rain that had been threatening all day started to pour. Now as you know, living in London for almost 4 years has given us a chance to experience lots and lots of rain. But this amount that came down, and for how long it did, impressed even us. By the time Amelia woke up, we were too late to go to the palace (Matt had seen the times before it crashed) and it was raining so hard that we didn't want to hang around the grounds looking at the outside, which was our Plan B if it was closed.

However, we also wanted to get out of the hotel room. So we decided to venture out again and try to find a reasonable place to eat. Now lest you think we're cheap, we're not. We don't mind paying money for a meal that looks good, but as we passed people sitting under the canopies, you can see what the food is like and we decided it wasn't worth the expense.

Like the previous evening, nothing really caught our fancy. And despite our best efforts, we were getting really wet. It didn't help that Amelia liked to stick her leg outside the protection of the rain cover and her pant leg was completely soaked. We were all soaked. But we didn't want to go back and just order room service again, the menu was limited, and while cheaper than the outside restaurants, still quite pricey. Luckily just as we were completely unsure what to do next, we stumbled upon a small grocery store. Yay! We'd just been talking about wishing we had one.

We went in and loaded up. We bought bread, lunch meat, two kinds of types of crisps, lots of water and a variety of Danish candy to try. We were pumped.

After that we headed back to the hotel and ate our picnic dinner on the bed. It was great. The rain kept coming down that night, long after we'd fallen asleep.

Mia riding the metro, getting her water intake in humid Copenhagen.