Days 1-2: 7/22-23/24

 Days 1-2, July 22-23

We're off to Scandinavia!

This was to be our first trip to an area that wasn't hot. Temperatures would be in the low 70s instead of lot 90s.

The convenience store at the Syracuse airport had a candy display and Walter pulled these off the shelf.

Here we are at JFK waiting for our second flight. 

Because we do the pre-trip with VBT, they meet us at the airport and transport us to our hotel. There is only one other time besides VBT trips that I have been met at an airport with a driver holding up a sign.

The van was clean and comfortable, but notice the floors of the airport garage?!?!

We are right in the center of downtown Copenhagen and the hotel is comfortable and unpretentious. 

We dropped off our luggage and set out to wander. Mike took a picture of the Rick Steves walking tour and we used that to get a lay of the land.

This square is right across the street from our hotel.

The downtown was mobbed with pedestrians shopping. It seemed like many were not tourists, but locals.

Sadly, there is a significant presence of American multi-national corporations (McDonald's, Starbucks, Burger King, etc.) There were also Chinese and Indian restaurants, something we didn't see at all in Italy.

We saw a number of sights on our walk but I will post those pictures tomorrow when I can add some commentary from our city bike tour.

Bikes are everywhere. There are dedicated bike lanes on every street; some streets are for bikes only; there are traffic lights for bikes.

With so many bikes, there has to be bike parking.

This one is front of a coffee shop.

There were a lot of front-loading cargo bikes. Some were fitted to carry kids.

This one was an ebike.

We later saw a very nice bike with a similar design built by a bike shop in Christiania. We hope to get to Christiania before we leave Copenhagen.

The Copenhagen subway is supposed to be state of the art. We took two long escalators below ground to check it out.

Like the AirTrain at JFK,  they are autonomous.

I am curious about how Denmark handles poverty since taxes are high and social services are very comprehensive. Still, there were panhandlers and people going through garbage cans looking for deposit bottles.

One thing that was impressive was a series of public toilets that were clean and safe. I couldn't really take a picture in the bathroom, but here is an entrance.

This takes care of one problem that homeless and transient people face.

Our first sit down was in a square where we got drinks at a kiosk.

Copenhagen is where Legos were created. This is just part of the line to get into the Legos store!

Notice the security guard has a lego light sabre.

We walked to an upscale restaurant recommended by the hotel front desk. It was good but pricey.

It started to pour outside before we were done so we looked at the coffee/dessert/apertif menu. I remembered that Rick Steves mentioned in his video on Copenhagen that there was a tradition Danish liquor, so we asked our waitperson to give us recommendations.

Here he is showing of some of the restaurant's stock. We settled on one that was a private label (white bottle at the end) and one that wasn't (third from the left that looks like a Kahlua bottle). Mike liked the private label that I picked and I liked the other one that Mike picked.

He asked us if we wanted a half shot or whole shot and we wisely picked half shots.

We passed them around to taste but remembered what Rick Steve's Danish tour guide said: "not to drink it like a woman...". So we downed the rest in a single slug. We were glad we had half shots. It warmed every cell that it touches and had the same effect as novocaine. We felt like we could light a fire with our breaths.

There was a table of locals (I am assuming) looking at us when the waiter gave the demonstration and we were sampling. I think they were thinking that we were wimpy tourists who had no idea what we were getting into.

 

Time for bed 9:32pm in Copenhagen, 3:32am EDT! I'll probably add more tomorrow.