Denmark 2003

Okay, first of all, let’s the get the immediate question out of the way.  Why biking in Denmark?  Well, Dad wanted to go me to go on a biking trip with him and kept offering up fun, easy trips in places like Utah, or western Virginia.   Well I live in Virginia, so taking time off to go biking in the rolling hills of Virginia didn’t sound like that much fun.  Not that Utah was an option either.  The elevation there would have killed me.  I wanted to go some place I hadn’t been before and I wanted some place flat.  Hello Denmark!  So I found this trip through Backroads and we were set to go.

And like most of my little adventures, the trip did not start well.  Dad and I headed out to Dulles to catch out United Express (yes Express!) to Toronto.  The flight was late, natch, but we had 4 hours to kill in Toronto so I was not worried.  But transiting through Toronto was a pain.  The Air Canada ticket counter for our flight to Copenhagen wasn’t opened, and the lines for the other flights were insane.  I managed to get us our boarding passes and then it was 2 buses and 2 security screenings to our gate.  We did manage to sample some fine Canadian beer while we waited for our flight and by the time we got on the plane I was pretty happy and tired.  So I fell asleep.  Before the plane took off.  The plane was over an hour late taking off, so I got a good little nap in.  The downside?  I didn’t sleep at all on the flight to Copenhagen.  We arrived in Copenhagen early in the morning and during our final descent we had a great view of the city and these HUGE windmills off the coast.  Passing through customs was a breeze and we grabbed a cab to head downtown to our hotel, the Hotel Kong Frederik.  Europe was in the midst of a heatwave and it was quite warmin Copenhagen.  Being the historic hotel that it was, it did not have air conditioning.  I mean, this is Denmark, right?  How hot could it be?  Well, pretty hot, our room was like a little dutch oven.  I took a shower and then crashed while Dad went wandering around the old town.  The window was open, but while it seemed cooler outside, it didn’t get any cooler in the room.  The first night was awful.  We were both jet lagged and it was just ugly hot in the room.  We did manage to sleep very late the next day and then got up and wandered down thestroget, the main pedestrian street in the old section of town.  We made our way over to Nyhaven which is a street that borders a canal that is lined with beautiful houses and lovely restaurants and cafes.  We stopped there for lunch and then made out way to the Royal Place AmalienborgCastle.  The square in the middle of the palace is huge and they do have guardsmen there in those tall, funny looking, furry hats.  I felt sorry for them in the heat. 

Then Dad and I walked along the shoreline to the Little Mermaid.  The statue is small, and pretty, but such a tourist trap.  On the way to the Little Mermaid, Dad and I did stop at this little Anglican church that was having it’s summer picnic.  It had its own beer truck (you gotta love the Anglicans!) and we stopped to rest for a bit!  That evening I went out to check out the café/bar scene while Dad crashed.  We did have the brilliant insight to ask for a fan, so we had this little fan pushing the hot air around in the room.  When I came back to the room a little after 2AM, the Irish bar across the street was so crowded that it had spill into the street.  And the Danes can get kind of loud when they drink.  When I got up to the room, even with ear plugs I couldn’t sleep with the noise and I know Dad was more that a bit frustrated.  We finally closed the windows figuring that we’re rather have some not-so-restful hot sleep, than just lie there and listen to the drunks.