"Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it." ---Soren Kierkegaard
We packed for cool weather, so finding temperatures in the 80s Fahrenheit (about 31 Celsius on thermometer signs we passed) caught us off guard. I had a pair of black shorts I intended to wear if the desire to visit the gym hit me (which it didn't), but my wife hates when I wear black tennis shoes with shorts, and my black Skechers or dress shoes were all I had.
Julie's TV “friends” Stacey and Clinton might have said my outfit was definitely “what not to wear,” but it was too hot for long pants. With bags under my eyes from jetlag drooping close to my knees, I wasn't going to win any sexy legs competitions anyway.
I had been anticipating cool weather and canals, so the trek through hot city streets en route to Rosenborg Castle surprised me as feeling more Mediterranean than Danish. Still, it was a pleasant walk, and after about fourteen hours of flights (including a layover in Seattle), it felt great to stretch my legs.
We walked through a bustling shopping area with street musicians and lots of restaurants. It always takes a while to get used to the high coastal European prices, but after converting from Danish Kroners to Euros, I realized that the general rule of thumb about a Euro (or a pound) buying about the same as a dollar regardless of exchange rates still held. Perusing restaurant menus as we walked, we hoped to find reasonable dinner prices without resorting to our frequent gourmet choices of McDonald's or Burger King, which are also high compared to their US counterparts but nonetheless relatively cheap, just as they are back home. Places with more panache always cost more.
When we arrived at the park by the castle, we heard avant garde jazz wafting through the air. The park itself is obviously heavily used and not as pristine as would be ideal, but the people listening to the music and drinking Tuborg beer seemed to be enjoying themselves. At this point, I was thinking that I wished we had thrown out our original plan when we found hot weather instead of cool and gone on a hop on, hop off canal tour instead, which is what I would recommend as the first item of business for anyone visiting Copenhagen in the future, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
As we got closer to the castle, the park became lovelier, and the Rosenborg Castle had a beautiful exterior.
None of us felt like buying tickets to see the inside, instead surrendering to the temptation of sitting under a gigantic willow tree where we could watch the less-than-crisp changing of the guards outside the palace.
The gardens proved to be quite lovely, and we took them in from a park bench for a few minutes, too.
A strange acting performance beckoned us from a nearby portion of the park, but I have no idea what some members of the crowd found funny about the performance set in three dumpsters. It must be a Danish thing.
We headed over to sit on the ground to watch the jazz on stage, but even Jazzman Jay found the quartet's Thelonious Monk improvisations too far removed from whatever original melody might have been in the sheet music. Besides, we had plans to meet my oldest daughter Gina and her husband Laszlo at the Ice Bar at Copenhagen Hotel 27 at 7, and we still needed to have dinner before that.
We found a sandwich sign for Pizza Maximus off a side road, and upon investigating the hole in the wall, the kids liked the smell and look of the pizza. They wanted to take pizza to eat along the canal next to our hotel,
but Julie and I wanted something a bit more Danish and upscale.
We left them there to wait for their pizza to cook while we went to find a good hot dog stand.
We ended up at Strecker's Pub and Brasserie, a handsome restaurant that had a sign touting a hamburger, salad and fries for 59 Kroners, which seemed relatively cheap for a nice place in that area. It proved to be a great choice. Julie and I split that meal, with the delicious burger thankfully being of big proportion, and I added a draft Carlsberg. Somehow, the tab came to 104 Kroners, but we were satisfied. The kids said their pepperoni with sundried tomato pizza was the best they ever tasted, with their Cokes plus pizza coming in at about 94 Kroner. We enjoyed a dinner for a family of four for about $40 US, which really isn't that bad.
Under our original plan, we would have already been dressed for night life in Copenhagen, but now we had to hoof it back to the hotel to change before doubling back to the Ice Bar.
