Visitor season is well and truly underway! Last week my lillesøster and her kæreste took some time out of their busy schedule of Oxford balls and lazing by Spanish pools to come get some free accommodation see us because they are missing us terribly.
These guys were in town for a whole week, and had already been to Copenhagen a few years back, so could afford a somewhat leisurely start to their trip. Like most days recently, it was a bit cold, windy and threatening rain, so we took up residence in the Botanical Gardens (Botanisk Have) greenhouse. It’s probably the warmest place in the city, plus Anna never met a tropical palm tree jungle that she didn’t love. I have no idea why I don’t think of going there more often in cold weather (probably fear of mould-borne disease).
There is a weird thermocline that you hit about halfway up the stairs to the canopy walk – it gets oppressively hot up there. My camera could not cope at all and panicked and got all foggy, while Anna happily plotted her future dream home (dream greenhouse?).
Despite feeling a kinship to the poor tropical plants forced to live in the cold climes of Denmark, the humidity eventually overcame us all. On the plus side, by then the bracing cold weather outside was a blessed relief.
I have no idea what is happening in this statue. If anyone can explain this please enlighten me. Whatever it is, Anna gives it two thumbs up, while the other woman just seems to be like ‘um, you stay there… I’m just… gonna…. go… over here now… also you should probably stop doing that now…’.
The Botanical Gardens are right near Torvehallerne, so we went and had some traditional Dansk food… ha, tricked – we did no such thing. We had tacos, obviously. In our defence, Hija de Sanchez is awesome, and eating somewhere painfully hip that is run by a crew of ex-Noma folk seems about as Danish as you can get in this day and age. The tacos were excellent, even the cripsy fish skin, but the real drawcards are the paletas (Mexican ice blocks). Tres leches paleta – where have you been all my life!? Super fucking lækker (to quote the Danish guy on the Vice Munchies video we just watched).
The next day we hit up Torvehallerne again, this time for some legit trad-Danish food – Smørrebrød. We had been aiming for Rita’s Smørrebrød, but because this is Denmark every second business is shut for weeks at a time for Summer holidays. Still, Hallernes Smørrebrød was a solid stand in.
In smørrebrød (aka butter and bread) Denmark has basically perfected the art of the open sandwich, and it’s clear we’ve barely even scraped the surface so far. Ant read somewhere that learning the art of smørrebrød can take over four years, so we might have just enough time in Denmark to get on top of it? We need to get out and eat some more, at the very least.
Fuelled by rugbrød and a heady mix of toppings (mostly dill), I took us up north to the Louisiana (any excuse to go back). There are a few new exhibitions opened since we were last there. We thought Anna had done a pretty good job of accidentally dressing to match the exhibition while we were in the first one:
That was, until we entered the second exhibition and this happened:
Who wore it better – Anna or the wall? I will love this image forever and ever, and really should have taken a wider shot to capture the other people in the room who were also enjoying this awkward coincidence. Copenhagen’s second-hand shops clearly knew exactly what was needed for this excursion – call it fate, call it destiny, call it what you will… it was perfection.
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