København! And the glorious Danish.

Hello dear friends!  It feels like a haven't posted in quite a while, although in all reality it has not been that long.  I just got back on Sunday evening from a quick jaunt to Copenhagen to meet up with three other CCers:  Hildy, Andrew and Katie.  We picked Copenhagen because it was (kind of) in the middle of all of us (Barcelona, Sweden, London, and of course Paris), and it was a really lucky decision because Copenhagen is seriously so cool.  I loved the city so much and would love to travel more around Scandinavia.  My flight got in later at night so I just went straight to bed upon arrival.  It was, however, gloriously, a very clean bed and room (unlike many other hostels) and did not have industrial light bulbs (which for some reason really bother me, and unfortunately for me, many hostels have them).  Anywhoo, The next morn we got up and started a walking tour of the city, thanks to good ole Frommer's online.  Ahh, the man has helped me so much with all of my travels here.  We found a fika shortly as well (which is coffee break in Swedish, and also my new favorite word).  Frommer's took us to a statue of Hans Christian Anderson, and the beautiful town hall square.  He also took us down this entirely pedestrian street, called Stroget, that has tons of shopping, and really stylish Danes as well.  While I'm mentioning stylish Danes, I might as well really give you a picture of what they're like because its incredible.  Here is what many of the girls wore when we were there:  awesome leather lace-up shoes (kind of like those men's J Crew suede ones if you know what I'm talking about), skinny jeans, the coolest wool cape/jacket you have ever seen, and a huge scarf.  Basically, it was just really good simple style.  Simple but every piece is perfect.  Man, those Danes.  If they didn't have a 25% sales tax I would have tried to buy all their clothes while I was there.

Froms (as I like to call him) then led us to a very cool old church.  He told us to take a break there at a little restaurant inside the church, but alas it was closed.  However, inside the church there was some sort of really weird art exhibit that involved laying down on beds, at least that's what we got out of the strange Danish video in the entry way.  We almost went into the exhibit and then decided we needed to find food.

After food, we went to Nyhavn, which is a really cool little street along the water that has all these antique boats moored there.  It also has a ton of cute restaurants on the water, which we saw more of the next day when we returned and it was sunny.

Nyhavn

Then we went to the castle and witnessed the changing of the guards.  We also saw one guard blatantly moving, so we went to go take a picture with him:

Friendly(ish) Guard

Then I had told everbody (at this point it was just Hildy and Andrew, as Katie arrived later in the day) that I really wanted to go to a design museum, and we were really close to one, so we decided to go.  After we had paid we realized it wasn't the one we were looking for, and that Copenhagen has a bunch of design museums because it is kind of a design center.  It was still a sweet museum--I enjoyed the art nouveau, old posters of Copenhagen, crazily designed chairs, and a bizarre porcelain cat that looked like Hildy.  The museum had a really cool courtyard as well that we explored, with these crazy clipped trees and statues.

Design Center Courtyard

We then passed by the national theater, and saw some posters for My Fair Lady, which we decided we would look into, as well as another very cool church.

Another Cool Church

Outside the church were these awesome stone chickens that we had a great time playing on.  Best kids toy ever.  We were heading to lunch and passed an entry way from which Dirty Projectors (best band everrrr) were blasting so we decided to check out the store, which was upstairs.  It was an awesome store because not only were they playing the album in its entirety , but they had the coolest designed stuff.   It was a bit like the MOMA store, if you've been there, but even cooler.  They had chairs and couches and cups and decorations.  I would love to work there.  Or to just live in Copenhagen and go to design school.  That night we had falafel for dinner and it was good, but not near as good as the Parisian falafel from the Marais.  Mmm...

The next day with everyone having arrived, we got an awesome breakfast that was a sampler plate of fruit, granola, yogurt, pancakes, mini quiche, cheese, eggs, and bread at an awesome bookstore/cafe.  Then we explored the star-shaped castle (mostly walking around the outside and looking out on the water) and saw the little mermaid, which is a rather small statue of a mermaid by the water that is a huge attraction in Copenhagen.  Hildy and I found out that tickets for My Fair Lady were half price the day of, so we went to the ticket booth to make sure and ask if it was in English.  We got tickets and then realized that when we had asked the ticket lady, I had thought she said English and Hildy had thought she had said Danish (she had a rather thick accent)...  We decided it would be a great cultural experience, and would find out the language when it started.  It was, in the end, in Danish, but the musical was amazing!!  Definitely one of my favorite parts of the trip.  I know the songs pretty well, so we knew what was happening most of the time.  Also, all the curse words were in English, so that helped.  It also had the most amazing costumes!  In the scene at the horse races, all the women had various gigantic tea cups on their heads, and Eliza had a giant spoon on her head that she kept (intentionally) almost hitting people with.  I was so glad that we ended up going.

Amazing costumes of My Fair Lady!

That night we went to a cool bar called the Living Room that Emmy recommended that had tons of little rooms with couches and a cool vibe.  Then we went to a bar with some sweet live music later on.

The next day we explored Christiania, which is across the river and a crazy hippie town.  It used to be army barracks that homeless people just took over, and now they just don't really have laws there and the government doesn't intervene.  Also, they don't pay the tax so it is much cheaper.  There were playgrounds, and food stands, and tables selling all kinds of things everywhere.  Everything was painted in bright colors.  Andrew and Hildy left at various times during the day, and after Christiania, Katie and I explored the meat packing district, which I had read was cool in a magazine.  It was very fun and a different vibe from other places we had been.  There were a bunch of old warehouse buildings that are now filled with cool restaurants and vintage shops.  We also went to a very surreal park that looked like a Dali painting.  It had a pagoda in it, a palace, and these crazy stumpy trees.

Frederiksberg Have (park)

  Then we took some public transport to the airport, ate an amazing Domino's pizza at the food court, and said 'farvel' to København!  Can't wait until I get to see you again.