One of the beautiful things about living in Italy has been the opportunity to go to so many places, including places that were never on my list (e.g., Basel). Another of these places is Copenhagen. I could not tell you how Copenhagen became a place that we decided to visit. It was just one of those conversations that involved Hubby having to work in Holland AGAIN, and the two of us deciding where we should go after that. I think I just looked at a map and said, “I’ve heard Copenhagen is cool” and that was that.
We arrived on Friday, November 7th and, unbeknonst to us, it was a holiday in Copenhagen – J-day which marks the arrival of Julebryg aka Christmas Beer. The beer is delivered at 8:59pm and it is a cause for celebration. As we learned throughout our weekend in Copenhagen, the most “popular” Julebryg is Tuborg Julebryg which is made by Carlsberg, which has headquarters in Copenhagen. Obviously all of the microbreweries have their own, and perhaps better, versions of julebryg, but the logo for Tuborg Julebryg was definitely the most prominent.
Anyway, with a national holiday like the release of Christmas Beer happening, we needed some help finding a place to eat and the concierge at the hotel found a place for us. Another interesting fact about Copenhagen – it has more Michelin starred restaurants than any other city in Scandinavia, and the most per square kilometer in the world (or something like that – it changes depending on who you ask). Our concierge made us a reservation at the sister restaurant of a one-Michelin starred restaurant (they claim two, but I looked it up and it’s one) that was supposed to be outstanding, so we were excited. That quickly changed.
The restaurant had no record of the reservation, but they promised to seat us in 10-15 minutes, so 45 minutes later we had a table. The server just sort of showed up and stared at us expectantly with no explanation of the menu (which would’ve been helpful because there was a prix fixe menu and an a la carte menu, which was really also a tasting menu). Those two things should’ve been the indication of what was to come – the service was probably the worst I’ve ever had in a restaurant. We ordered 4 courses, and waited 40-45 minutes between courses and one dish was never delivered. Our dirty plates from 3rd course sat in front of us for 55 min. My husband finally went up to the bar to ask for the check because they were clearly finished serving us, and to let them know we hadn’t received a dish and the bartender said, “Well that’s unacceptable” but never offered to do anything to rectify the problem. A server – not ours- brought the bill over and threw it on the table and stalked off, still not acknowledging the dirty dishes in front of us. It’s really unfortunate because the food was good, but there wasn’t much of it and we had to wait so long that we were both starving and inhaled it. I’d try to give them the benefit of the doubt because it was a busy night, but by the end of our evening, there were plenty of empty tables and we watched our server spend lots of time with other guests while completely ignoring us. For a city that celebrates its food culture, I expected much, much more and was very disappointed. Honestly, it’s the first time in all of my travels that I can say I was really let down by a dining experience.
The next day, however, was city exploration day, and we were both excited about that. After all of the cities that we explored on foot, we agreed that we were finished with walking, and decided to do sightseeing trips by boat and by bike. Cheesy, yes. Necessary, definitely.
We started the day with a canal-cruise from Nyhaven that took us on the main Canal, into the city center of Copenhagen, and into Christianshaven. The tour had a lot of very useful information, and we really got a sense of the history of Copenhagen as a naval base and a shipping hub.
After our canal tour, we met up with our guide Blanca for a biking/tasting tour of Copenhagen. We met in front of the Hans Christian Andersen statue, and headed off on bikes to see and taste what Copenhagen is all about. Biking is a way of life in Copenhagen – much like Amsterdam – so it made sense that we experience Copenhagen that way.
We saw a lot of sights like Amalienborg Palace, but we also ate a lot of great food! We ate pastries (or what we Americans would call danish – ha!); open faced sandwiches called Smørrebrød made from “black bread” (which is really a whole-grain bread filled with seeds, designed to fill you up so you eat less), meat or fish, and some sort of pickled vegetables; another pastry which is a spin off of the typical gasebryst except covered in chocolate and coconut; a trip to the public market for danish cheese; and finally, a stop at a microbrewery in the “multicultural” part of town where we finally got to taste the famous julebryg! It smelled like cinnamon and hints of pine, and I’m sure tasted like it too, if only I could get over the fact that it tasted like beer. Have I mentioned I’m not a beer drinker?
We had about 40 hours in Copenhagen which is both not enough and plenty of time to get a feel for the city. We didn’t get to see all of the castles or museums, but in some ways, once you’ve seen one castle, you’ve seen them all. In other ways, every castle, museum, shopping street, and market is so different and unique that you could easily spend a few weeks touring around each city and its surrounding area and still never see everything!
