“Once you label me, you negate me.”---Soren Kierkegaard
Until MOJO-HD succumbed to financial reality and shut down due to lack of advertising, it was my favorite TV channel and home to my favorite TV show, “Three Sheets” starring Zane Lamprey.
Don't confuse “Three Sheets” with the pale imitation, “The Thirsty Traveler,” that tries to trick viewers with a misleading listing on the channel guides. Nobody does it like Zane, and when he extolled the virtues of the Absolut Ice Bar at Copenhagen's Hotel 27 in his Denmark episode, I knew we must experience it on this trip.
When Julie found out the price was more than $25 per person for admission and one drink, she said it sounded like a rip off, but we made reservations anyway, because I felt I owed it to my clients to know the truth so they could make informed travel decisions. That's just the way I roll.
In retrospect, I must sheepishly admit that the money would probably be better spent toward admission to Tivoli, the world renowned amusement park in the heart of Copenhagen, but taking relative value out of the equation, it was a cool experience....in more ways than the obvious.
Jay managed to show up on time at 7 PM by walking faster than the rest of us, and by the time Julie, Amy and I arrived, he and my son-in-law Laszlo were sipping water at the regular bar at the hotel.
Gina had just started a Carlsberg, but the lounge was quite warm, and rushing back and forth across town had me sweating. We were ten minutes late for our reservation already, so I thought we better get going.
I unconscionably rushed Gina to finish her rather expensive beverage so that we could man parkas and gloves to go into the ice walled bar.
Once inside, everything but the floor is either made of ice or covered in ice, including the bar, pictures and chairs. The glasses are made entirely of ice, imported from Sweden's Ice Hotel.
I wanted to order an Absolut Pear, which Zane assured me was quite tasty, but they no longer offered that. I ordered some kind of vanilla vodka drink, and it was overly sweet, as were those everyone else in our party tried. They were also smaller than I anticipated, although I don't know that I would have wanted any more. I think straight Absolut Vodka or a Martini would have been a better choice, although I don't remember seeing them on the menu.
Despite the drinks, however, we had a good time, thanks primarily to my fun-loving children who took the cue from the pounding techno music to start doing some bobbing dance moves. We had fun bouncing around to the music, even after some other patrons entered and possibly labeled us as crazy Americans.
After about a half hour, the cold was getting to us, so we re-surfaced into the warm Copenhagen air to watch a kind of beat-poet-jazz-meets-Talking-Heads band playing at the hotel's patio bar. We didn't order drinks, but we did pass around my melting ice glass which I took as a short-lived souvenir.
Gina and Laszlo were hungry, so they bought some take-out Indian food to eat on the patio by our hotel, but the Marriott restaurant was busy, and sitting at their tables just wouldn't be right, so we sat on a nearby concrete platform by the canal.
The daylight defied the time of 9:40 PM, and I had been awake for something like 25 hours, so I was a party pooper, leading the way to bed, although admittedly once there I had trouble getting to sleep, much less staying asleep.
