Day 2: Summer holiday season

So, our second day in Copenhagen was plagued by the Danish summer holiday season. We woke early to attempt to score the special Wednesday pastry at the Skt Peders bakery. I think we left the hotel around 7AM for this adventure. After some walking, we arrived at the bakery only to see a sign that said they were closed for the next week while they were on holiday. Ugh!! No special Wednesday pastry for us.

That led us to a standard bakery where we got a couple basic pastries. Then, we read about La Glace bakery and decided to try it out. Jeff got a pot of hot chocolate and some fancy pastry and I got a little orange cake. Mine was just okay. Jeff's was delicious. Jeff: 1 Alison: 0. Actually, this was Jeff: 2 Alison: 0 as Jeff's wine selection was better than mine the night before.

Then, we strolled up to Rosenborg Castle. Definitely a good move to get there right when it opened at 10AM. Lines seemed shorter than when we left. We used the Rick Steves' self-guided tour of the castle from our tour book we bought and that was amazing. We learned all kinds of random things like the removeable tiles in the floor for music come through, the mirror room where King Christian IV looked up the hoop skirts of ladies, and random facts about jewelry in the Crown Jewels room. A great way to see the castle.

Rick Steves told us about this treasure. Apparently the wife of one of the Kings cheated on him. So, he gave her this ring of a hand shaking a penis. What?! Never would have noticed that.

After that, we did some Euro game shopping so we'd have things to do on trains and boats and late nights at the hotel. We both bought a card game (Tessen for Jeff and Fungi for me). Then, it was lunch time. We had fancy hot dogs from Dop. Yummy!

We stopped in a couple of very nice churches and made our way to our 2PM bike tour w/ Bike Copehnagen with Mike. This guy was a real character. I was nervous about this tour. 4 hours on a bike. If you recall some of my older posts on biking (Alaska and Indonesia), you'll know I'm not a bike expert. Despite the craziness of biking the busy streets of Copenhagen, I survived. Without crashing. Or getting hit by people or bikes or buses or cars. We got to see a lot of the city and it had been raining all morning so it wasn't as hot as days past. We saw the equivalent of the White House/Congress building in Denmark, rode on the bike only path for a bit (these people love the biking) and took a tour through Christinaia (the hippie community of Copenhagen where people sell drugs and other crazy stuff!). The tour ended w/ a chance to jump into the Port of Copenhagen. Apparently, it's the cleanest port water of any 1 million+ city in the world. Jeff did this. I did not. If it had been about 5 degrees warmer, I would have. But it was chilly.

After the bike tour I attempted to take Jeff to get smorrebrod at Aamanns, but guess what?! It was closed for the holiday season as well! Fortunately, there was another smorrebrod place on the corner, so we ate there. Outside. Had some wine and all was good. Our little open face sandwiches were delicious. Jeff had 3: herring with curry, roast beef, and smoked salmon w/ scrambled eggs. All amazing. I had 2: pickled herring and marinated goat's cheese. Good stuff!!

We went back to the hotel, played some card games, and watched a weird movie on TV. It was in English w/ Danish subtitles. The Life Before Her Eyes. The end was ridiculous. And, I'm annoyed I stayed awake late to watch it.

Today, I did a quick 5 miler around the city. Took some quick pics. And, now we're on a train to Stockholm. More adventures to come!