Vacation Adventures: Scandinavia(September 8-12, 2010)
The second Thursday of every September is a holiday in Geneva so we decided to take a long weekend trip. When Preston looked at prices to get out of town, they were significantly less if we left Wednesday i instead of Thursday so ... why not take a long long weekend?!
We had an easy two hour flight direct from Geneva to Copenhagen, Denmark on EasyJet. We took a cab to our hotel, the Copenhagen Admiral, and got settled in. We immediately fell in love with the architecture of the hotel. Like both our Seattle and Geneva house/apt, the hotel has exposed beams throughout so Preston was pretty pleased with the hotel choice (the room view of a harbor ship and the Opera House was pretty great too). I thought it was funny that our Foders "Essential Scandinavia" travel book noted the "pros" of our hotel, "renovated rooms; great restaurant; quiet waterfront location" and the "cons": "short walk to main attractions and other conveniences." Those are cons??
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| Copenhagen Admiral Hotel |
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Incredible exposed beams
in our room |
The hotel was once a grain warehouse and we heard that Oprah and Michelle Obama enjoyed their stay there during the U.S.'s bid for Chicago to host the 2016 Summer Games. Wonder if they had a good time?!
We decided to venture around a find a lunch spot. Just a few steps from the Admiral hotel is Nyhavn, the famous waterfront street that lines a harbor inlet. We had a good lunch and some Carlsburg beer outside at Ole Grille, part of one of the colorful buildings.
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| Beautiful Nyhavn |
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| Some of the outdoor seating along Nyhavn |
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| Cheers from Denmark! |
We walked off lunch through Orsteds Parken and down Hans Christian Andersen Boulevard towards Tivoli Gardens, one of the world's most famous amusement parks. We read that Walt Disney was inspired to create Disney World after visiting and commented, "Now this is what an amusement park should be."
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| Orsteds Parken |
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Tivoli Gardens
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This is a completely normal street -- the amount of bicycles everywhere amazed me |
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How amazing is this? "Carlsburg: Probably the best beer in town"
After working with Legal teams on marketing
messages for the last 11 years, I *love* this! |
We continued our walk past Christiansborg Palace and the former Stock Exchange with its four dragon spire, all part of the Christians Brygge part of town.
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| The river next to Christiansborg Palace |
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| Christiansborg Palace |
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| Four dragon spire above the old stock exchange |
We made it back to the hotel in time for Preston to skype with the office in Seattle and for me to take a siesta (it's vacation after all!).
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Nyhavn en route back to
the Copenhagen Admiral - yes we really
took this amazing picture (and all others too!).
It's so beautiful it looks fake! |
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| Your bloggers Copenhagen style |
We headed back out to explore some more before dinner. When we got hungry we thought it would be easy to secure a dinner spot being a Wednesday night but we were told by the stern blonde waitress at the restaurant we chose, "come back in 10 minutes." I was scared; we did what we were told. The actual dinner at Pastis (when we were allowed back in!) was great. |
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En route to dinner I found this lamp -- hilarious Danish design, I thought.
I wanted to buy it.
Preston called me a perv and said no way.
Oh well, at least it's documented here. :) |
After dinner we walked through Amalienborg, the square where the Danish Royals live. We were the only visitors in the dimly lit square (the Queen is out of town), so it was just us and the royal guard. We learned that the Danes love the Royal family. A cost analysis was done a few years ago and the royal family actually generates more revenue for Denmark than their cost of living. The Danish Royals are also the world's oldest monarchy.
Queen Margrethe II is exceptionally popular and has been Queen since she was only 18. She studied at Cambridge and the Sorbonne and her artistic accomplishments include designing costumes for a television production of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Sheperdess and the Chimney Sweep" and the illustrationing an edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings." Not bad.
The next morning we ventured out for some coffee and danishes (obviously!) before meeting up with our segway tour guide. En route to breakfast we even bumped into the google maps photo guy. Check googlemaps, who knows, we may be featured wandering around Copenhagen!
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| The Googlemaps mobile |
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Preston's Danish morning routine -- danishes, lattes and
the International Herald Tribune along Kongens Nytov |
After the best vanilla latte I have ever had we walked north to meet Seamus, our segway guide. We walked along the Indehanv Yderbavn waterfront on the east side of the city and stopped to admire the gorgeous Gefion Springvandet (the Gefion Statue) situated right before Kastellet park. Legend has it the goddess Gefion was promised as much of Sweden as she could plow in a night. The myth says that she changed her sons to oxen and used them to section off what is now the island of Zealand in Denmark, partially on which Copenhagen sits.
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| Gefion Statue |
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Side view of the Gefion Statue.
Preston loved the water shooting from the bull's nostrils. |
Along the way we also went past the spot where the "Little Mermaid" statue is usually situated. Thank goodness for our Seattle pal, Lisa Huag, telling us the statue is currently in Shanghai for the World Expo -- she managed my expectations. The statue and the rocks she sits on may be gone until October 31 but they have a live video feed to China set up where she normally "lives" in the harbor. A bit odd, right?
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| Normal spot where the Little Mermaid is |
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| Little Mermaid live feed to Shanghai |
The disappointment I felt over the Little Mermaid was soon forgotten when the fun of our segway tour began. We read on TripAdvisor (one of Expedia, Inc.'s gems as far as I'm concerned!) that the segway tour of Copenhagen was the number one best activity.
The eight mile tour (sing along: "eeeight mile tour!") was a blast. Seamus, the owner/operator, moved to Copenhagen two and a half years ago from Dublin and doesn't like Denmark ... he "luuuves" it (said with his Irish brogue).
We learned a lot:
- the most popular response he gets when he points out the Little Mermaid, when she's actually in town, is, "That's it?!,"
- new cars in Denmark are taxed 183 percent!!!,
- hence there is, on average, two bicycles per person in Copenhagen,
- Christianhaven, the hippie community, is where the tricycle contraptions, about which Preston will likely be blogging, began,
- the Queen's pal, Mr. Mc-Kinney Møller, the very rich shipping tycoon, built the famous Copenhagen opera house (Opeerahus) for her because she enjoys the music so much,
- our hotel, the Admiral, had a fire but the wood beams were so thick and strong that all they really needed to do was sandblast the walls to clean up the char, and, most notably,
- Seamus doesn't have segway insurance, nor did we have to sign wavers, as it's not a litigious culture; and if you can believe it, I asked the insurance question, not Preston!
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| En route to ride some segways |
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Go Speed Racer,
Go, Go Speed Racer! |
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Out of bounds/breaking the rules
during the practice session!
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Preston with some bizzaro Hans Christian Andersen
story statues |
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| Seeegway Maaaan! |
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| The Opera House |
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Amalienboug Palace, where the Royal fam lives
(maybe they were taking pictures of US on the segways
from their windows!) |
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The Queen's house in Amalienboug Palace square (she wasn't there, hence
no flag!) |
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| Check out Mr. Cocky with the leg in the air AND no hands! |
After the tour we decided to go Irish pub hopping for happy hour while we wandered back into the main part of town and had dinner at Momma Rosa's Mexican/Italian restaurant. That's right, they "specialize" in both cuisines. It was fun and the only inexpensive meal (including our danishes and lattes!) we had in the city.
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| Happy hour Irish pub hopping |
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| Thursday night dinner locale |
Friday we took off for Sweden. We took the train across OOresund Bridge and realized very quickly that we were not in Switzerland anymore. The train from Copenhagen to Malmo runs every 20 minutes and is supposed to only take 35 minutes. We boarded and about 10 minutes into the trip a woman got on the intercom and said, "Sorry, we have a delay. Also, we will not actually be stopping at the Copenhagen Airport as originally scheduled. Please remain on the train until the first stop in Sweden, get off and take the first train back to Copenhagen for the airport if that is your destination. I hope you still make your flight. Sorry for the delay." WHAT?! That would never happen in Switzerland! Oh and the 35 minute train would also never have taken one hour!
We felt sorry for our fellow airport-bound passengers as they got off in front of the Ikea (our first Ikea sighting in Sweden) but we went about our day.
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| Swedish wind farm view from the train |
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| That's right, a real life Swedish Ikea |
Welcome to Sweden!
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| Malmo lighthouse |
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| Kinda looks like it came from the Goonies, right?! |
The first place we wanted to see was the area built for the 2001 European Housing Expo along the Ribersborgsstranden waterfront (with great views of the OOresund Bridge). Along the way we saw an amazing tower, "Turning Torso," that anchors the entire expo space.
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The Turning Torso building -- it even
has my new favorite feature ... a MOAT! |
The 58 different types of housing (more than 500 homes) featured during the expo were eventually sold as residences; even if we weren't invited in, they were still cool to walk around!
We had lunch at Cafe Italia along the waterfront and had some of the best lox on salad I have ever had. We walked back to the center of town via the Slottsmollan park.
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| OOresund Bridge (between Sweden and Denmark) |
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The only downside of working in travel -- when you're traveling
you have to sometimes have to work! Conference call
down and I was back to being a tourist.
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| A "green" roof in Slottsmollan Park |
Back in town, specifically the Davidshall area, we shopped and perused the Swedish design stores.
We walked through the Form/Design Center that opened in 1964 and is Sweden's oldest design center. It was a multi-level space with everything from furniture to childrens books. Pretty cool. Very expensive.
Preston had to host his daily work call so I settled in to Mosaik, a popular happy hour tapas place in the middle of town. Preston walked in just as the pouring rain started to come down so we stayed a bit longer before venturing out to find some famous Swedish meatballs.
The super nice waitress at Mosaik said the most authentic Swedish restaurant in town is "Bullen" and pointed us in the right direction. The restaurant was completely packed with wall-to-wall Swedes so we figured the food had to be good; we were not disappointed.
We struck up conversation with a group of friends seated next two us. The very pretty blonde woman told us she she is originally from Stockholm, lives in Malmo and raised her children in Martinique where she taught English. She's been to Geneva, she's not going back!
Eva, our new friend, is currently a reporter for Sweden's big newspaper, Kvalls posten. She said she just wrote in today's paper about "Dockplats 2010," the outdoor performance consisting of divers, "swim artists," choirs, and dancers from the Skane Dance Theater being held in Malmo for four nights (September 9-13).
She said we had to check it out. It was free so we did!
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Preston said his favorite part was seeing how construction cranes
could be used as performance art! |
Saturday we spent the day back in Denmark. Preston navigated the subway like a champion. We started out the day with our Scandinavian ritual, lattes, danishes and the paper at the coffee shop. We then went to Experimentarium, five miles north of Copenhagen in Hellerup, and played for a bit.
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The subways are awesome, huge
couch-like seating, sections just
for bikes and tv screens throughout |
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| Preston playing with the green screen at Experimentarium |
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| Apparently I have good audio memory |
Despite the pouring rain back in town we went to Tivoli Gardens for the afternoon.
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| Tivoli pirate ship |
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How cute is this?! Little prince and princess
sailing around Tivoli |
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| Very pleased with himself |
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Attempting to channel the archery skills I learned during
one Dwight Englewood term! |
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| Preston wanted to try this break the plate game |
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| He rocked it actually! |
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Fresh adult beverages via vending machine -
genius |
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| Tivoli mini stage |
We finished the day by having a nice Italian dinner outside along Nyhavn. This boat was having a party right next to us and playing a slide show. It was a weird cross between a "we just finished restoring this boat" and a holiday party!
Sunday our bad luck with weather continued. Preston went for a run in the early Copenhagen sun and when we left the hotel to get our morning lattes it was pouring rain (again!). At least the sunshine wasn't out to make it extra hard to board the plane back to Geneva!
Really had an amazing holiday! Love you Scandinavia.
Wednesday – Sunday, September 8-12, 2010
Hotel review: A fabulous hotel in a perfect location. We upgraded from a standard to a deluxe double. We loved the views of the water and Opera House from our room and the staff was very friendly. We didn't eat at the hotel restaurant, Salt, but we heard it has a great chef. No free wifi anywhere in the hotel though.
Other comments: Everyone rides bicycles in both Copenhagen (Denmark) and Malmo (Sweden). The people are ridiculously beautiful. Think two countries of Elin Nordgrens and Derek Houghs (he's the blondie from Dancing with the Stars!). Next time ... Stockholm and the ice hotels!
counter culture roots with a large car-free zone and settlements along a long urban park, buttressed between the old earthen city walls. Quite in contrast to the generally affluent streets and canals of the center of town, Christianhavn sports communities of eclectic shacks made almost exclusively of recycled building materials. It smells like camping--the long, damp, smoky kind of camping. What brought me to explore the parks and neighborhoods of the island was neither the lakeside setting nor the unregulated construction style, but rather their interesting mode of transportation.
n their parents’ bikes. Leave it to a fertile society of innovators to manufacture their own version of transportation—from the island of Christianhavn was born the cargo bike, or as I like to call them, the reverse tricycle.
the front, roughly the size of a typical dock cart at a marina, the reverse trike has two wheels on the front. End user options are limitless. Take for example the double wide kids seats, the dog and kid with seatbelts or the open plan for groceries, firewood or more recycled building supplies. Many of the trikes are produced by a local company who’s site is: http://www.christianiabikes.dk/galleri.php It’s in Danish, but you’ll get the idea. A great video of these bikes is at: http://www.copenhagenize.com/ Check out the “Cargo Bike of Copenhagen” video.
