One of the highlights of our trip was to go and take a look at the famous cover of the Lonely Planet guide for Copenhagen - Nyhavn. It is a place with rows of beautiful coloured houses lining along the river. It fascinated me for a long time, and I had been harping to go and take a look. And finally, we were there. Frankly, it was a nice place for seeing and relaxing though the windy weather made it a bit "tough". We went there twice, one by walking from our hotel and the other by boat. It was still a nice and beautiful experience and the "that's it?" kind of feeling. Decided not to dine there though as we had specially booked a dinner at "Krebsegaarden" - a top ranked restaurant in trip advisor. We had our dinner on somewhat like a "tasting menu" - and each serving came with a different wine from different countries. My wife drank much than me and we were a bit worried on making our way back to hotel drunk.
The little mermaid statue in Copenhagen found its meaning as it was one character from HC Anderson's fairy tales. Dunno why it felt a bit magical to me. Maybe it was "born" in Copenhagen as a result of the fairy tales? We didn't do the typical tourist photos as there were too many people queuing to take a photo with the mermaid. And another reason was we were more interested by the sakura trees in Copenhagen.
Another area worth mentioning is Christiania. It supposed to be a "Freetown" which is on its own, and it was converted to a residential area from an army barrack. We felt a bit interesting and also a bit wary as we were told that "no photography" was allowed in certain areas of the Freetown. So, I told my wife not to take any photos in the Freetown. There was indeed an area of "strange smell" with booths in camouflaged cover - not really sure what the booths were selling though - but it was "no photography" zone. The place was quite huge to us, and a few entrances and exits from different corners of the Freetown. Along a lake, there were houses with owners from Japan and other countries too. It was an unique experience. Coming to Copenhagen - we have to go to the old amusement park - The Tivoli Gardens. It was the oldest operating amusement park and it made me reminded of the times I played in our amusement park back in homeland. The Gardens, however was huge. In fact, we could see the scary "Star Flyer" from our hotel and it was not for the faint hearts. I personally liked the "Flying Trunk" which showed a slow ride into showing the famous stories by HC Anderson. We also tried a "safe and mild" looking Odin Express train ride and well, it was fast and furious at certain turns and this had scared my wife too. Oops. The Ferris Wheel was another highlights and my wife said we got to take in the day and night for different views of the city. For the night ride, we were the only couple taking the ride and the operator told us "Enjoy" and "Woa Woa" with a grin. My wife said he thought he was doing us a "favour"...
I decided to do something different this time in regards to free breakfast served by the hotel. We missed the opening hours of a very famous cake shop near our hotel - "La Glace". We went past it a few times and it was closed due to Danish holidays. We decided then to skip our hotel breakfast on the day of our check-out and ventured to try the cakes. We were one of the first few to get in the shop. Well, the cakes were yummy and the chocolate drink by my wife was concentrated and thick. Haha, we liked the cakes. There were locals ordering cakes and even wedding cakes. Eating cakes in an old shop was a fairy tale thing to me and us.
It was a very magical feel for being in Denmark. Quite different feel as compared to other visits. In summary, we are re-living our fairy tales - Lego, Sakuras, Tivoli, Cakes etc. It would be very apt to end this blog with a quote from HC Anderson - Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.
Yes, I agree totally. Our lives are wonderful bunch of lovely fairy tales.
No comments:
Post a Comment