Welcome back to the blog! It's been awhile but I'm on a trip again and I want to share my experiences with you all yet again. This time around I am traveling through Denmark and Sweden with my dad on our first and hopefully not last big trip together. We flew Air Berlin from NYC JfK - a hugely big thank you to Peter and Vicki for picking us up at the airport, putting us up for the night, and ferrying us back to the airport the next afternoon! It was a seriously animal pantry, lobby your Mom kind of thing to do (inside jokes) and we appreciated it.
Air Berlin was typical of the European airlines. Flight attendants with charming accents, plenty of free alcohol, and a good selection of movies and shows to watch. Dad and I both enjoyed Anchorman 2 on our flight over and our meals weren't too bad either. My only gripe is that there is zero leg room on their planes and their seat backs recline pretty far - farther I think than I've ever seen. And of course the lady in front of me kept hers cranked back the whole flight. I couldn't get out of my seat without giving it a good shoulder check - which I delighted in doing everytime. Passive-aggressive airline funtime!
After a short layover in Dusseldorf, we flew on to Copenhagen and landed about an hour later. One checked bag retrieval, one bathroom break, and one train ride later we were disembarking at Copenhagen's central station - a terrifically medieval looking place but with chandeliers. It was still mid morning here so we dropped our bags off at the hotel and went and started exploring the Christianshavn area south of central Copenhagen. We went inside the Christians Church, walked along the river, and stopped for danishes at a bakery before making our way over to the Vor Frelsers Church which had a famous spire that is open to the public that I wanted to go to the top of.
And what a spire! And what a church! Absolutely beautiful and with spiraling spire, it had a touch of the fantastic. the spiral on the outside of the spire was actually the top portion of the stairs and let me tell you, climbing the ladders up through the belfry past bells that tolled the quarter hours up to the roof and the walking up that spiralling, narrowing stair up to the sky was pretty crazy. Very fun experience. Dad sat that one out, as 400 stairs was quite a lot.
After that we walked over to Christiana, the hippie commune that lives off the grid and has its own way of doing things. It was mostly a lot of food trucks repurposed as mobile head shops and old warehouses repurposed as hash and pot bars. Interesting but not really our scene. However, the rain intensified there so we spent a lot of time standing under tents avoiding getting soaked until we at last got ourselves to a bar for a couple Carlsbergs.
Eventually we left Christiana, and Christianshavn via the roads along the canals and back up to central Copenhagen. We explored the Slotshomen area (Danish government seat) and took an elevator to the top of the parliamentary building for another bird's eye view of Copenhagen. This time Dad joined me. Checked into our tiny, tiny hotel room at Cabinn City Hotel and got ourselves situated before heading back out for a hell of a meal at Frk. Barners Kaelder (Mrs. Barner's Cellar).
Whew! Ready to call it a night!
