Escape from Grey Gardens

I thought it was Coipenhagen, but I keep seeing bits of Italy.

Actually, the other 100 or so photos I shot today are very Copenhagen; these are just copies that made me do double takes.

The flights went smoothly but after the long night and day I felt pretty spent when we got in. Apartment keys were left for us at a desk at the airport. We found that, ATM, metro easily but my checked suitcase was more trouble. I didn't recognize it going around on the carousel because the handle, ST tag, and distinguishing white ribbon had been ripped off it and it looked like it had been drop-kicked down the tarmac. No harm done, except we saw it go around 8 times before it dawned on me that the poor broken suitcase was in fact, mine.

The apartment is pretty nice--I'll review that later so spare talking about it now. We overlook a large garden and have lots of elbow room. We arrived 6:30ish, threw everything down and went out for groceries, finding nearly everything of course closed. Fakta, Netto, Irma, nope. We found a bakery and got some bread, and a little mom and pop that had a few neccessities, so that done we wenr for a walk and ate at a place Soljet had recommended, The Front Page on a lake. They were running out of everything but made us enormous club sandwiches. Staggered back, looked for news of tropical storm Fay on the TV, got only that Cuba was in peril, collapsed.

I woke up at 3 AM wide awake, so put on the iPod to listen to some episodes of This American Life I had piled up there. The first one that came up was about people who couldn't sleep and had bizarre sleep disorders--that would not do to make one drift off. So I read about Copenhagen and woke up 4 hours later with The Lonely Planet guidebook stuck to my face--literally. I was under a down comforter and the sweat made the book adhere.

I might have absorbed more than ink, since we seemed to see everything on the top 10 list today without really trying to. First we went to the rental agent's office--very nice folks at Hay4You. We paid up and chatted politics, then Jim and I made groceries at Irma, which we were told was pricier but better quality. Mostly we went there since it was so close and we were hungry--it sort of appeared as we were en route. Sights kept doing that later in the day--I think if you just wander around Copenhagen you run into most of what is in the books. The trick might be wandering beyond that, but I don't know that we're here long enough for that.

Grocery--some sticker shock, but Italian wine and parmesan reggiano were downright reasonable. Chores accomplished, we set off to do a few touristy things, have a long walk and see the town. We wound up climbing the Round Tower, mainly because we ran into it. Supposedly Peter the Great clomped up it on his horse. We got the lay of the land better from up there, also saw a crafts and photography exhibit in an attached gallery. We wound up at Nyhaven and wandered around for awhile before deciding to get on a canal boat tour. It was well-narrated and helpful as a familiarization tour, but also just pleasant to sit still and let something carry us about on the water. Jim fell in love with our narrator who said her name was Heather but we thought she needed a more Viking name (Helga? no--we settled on "The Viking Princess." I took both of the photos above from the boat. My favorite part was swinging around the back end of the Little Mermaid so we could take pictures of people taking pictures of her. It's a nice enough statue but probably not worth a pilgrimage. I was also impressed at the amount of public buildings devoted to culture and the arts. The VP told us what lots of buildings had been, but it always ended with, "Now it is . . . a museeee-um" with a kind of dramatic microphone wave gesture. We were utterly charmed by the VP.

More hiking, more Stroget, which, forgive me, is just like the biggest mall in the universe, endless shops, not my cup o tea. But, there was some good people watching there. We wound up walking around the outside of Tivoli and suddenly both became dog tired, so we hopped a commuter train from Central Station to Norreport, a mere one stop but nice relief from cobblestones. I love that there are bike lanes everywhere here and lots of people seriously using bikes to commute. At home "bike lane" means something put up for recreation in an area remote from day-to-day business. Another thing which I don't think the guidebooks conveyed is the different styles of architecture mixing well, from the modern opera house and the brand new theatre to a very lovely Renaissance building I nned to look up because our VP under-narrated it.

Anyway, after the train we took a few moments in the station to figure out how one gets to Helsingor, then we wound up in a square having a very necessary but overpriced beer, then home again, and I made pasta for dinner while JIm solved a little plumbing problem with the apartment. He's not feeling well, poor guy. I think it's mainly jetlag. I'm doing better on that score than usual, although as soon as I finish this I'll probably fall asleep.

We dropped in on Spar Shipping at Nyhaven only to learn the next boat going to Hven isn't until Thursday, which is the first full day of the conference. So we probably will miss going to Hven, drat. We're going to Helsingor Wednesday since on the way back that's the Louisiana Museum's late night, till 10. We may look in on the Karen Blixen museum which is on the way too, and just make a long day of it.

Tomorrow, not sure. Tivoli? I really liked Christianshavn seen from the boat, so I'd like to go walk around there and go to Christiana. The Danish Resistance museum was closed today, so definitely that.

A few more photos and I'm folding up--I am making lots of typos and probably not much sense.

Hans Christian Anderson slept here and, um, probably entertained a sailor or two... The weird thing is this little attic is smack in the middle of a big shiny department store, Magasin Nord, next to the kitchen appliances, right near the glossy espresso machines. It took us awhile to find it.

From atop the Round Tower

Pretty Nyhaven

The most photographed woman in Copenhagen