Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Danish Delights

Copenhagen is a food-lover’s paradise.  This year, the city was awarded 15 Michelin stars across 13 restaurants.  Being the foodies we are, David and I chose to visit Denmark for the May bank holiday weekend. 

We invited our friends, Paul and Alyson Tart, to come with us.  Since we moved to London, we’ve mostly travelled on our own.  This year, David and I are only taking one vacation alone together – our anniversary trip to the Maldives.  2013 is the year of travelling with friends and family!  And that’s always more fun, right?

We met the Tarts at one of the UT alumni game-watching parties last year, but I had also known Paul back in college when he was in the Petroleum Engineering school with my roommate, Anna, and our friends, Terri and Meike.  We have a ton in common with the Tarts, including our love of travel!

We took a flight out on Friday after work and arrived at our hotel, the Admiral, later that night.  Since we were only going to be in Denmark for 2½ days, we decided to do a Segway tour first thing Saturday morning to get our bearings and see as much of the city as we could that first day.




Paul and Alyson had done Segway tours before, but David and I were newbies.  After having breakfast in the New Harbor near our hotel, we had a quick orientation while the Tarts schooled us in the art of the Segway.  We picked it up pretty fast and now David is in love with the Segway.  He wants one to zoom around London!  It is super easy and a fun way of exploring a new city.  People were taking pictures and videos of us; we were definitely the center of attention (probably because we were 3 feet taller than everyone around us).

The New Harbor

We saw sites like the Black Diamond, 
the modern extension of the Royal Library,

the Round Tower,

the Marble Church and Amalienborg Castle, the home of the royal family,

and of course, the jewel of Copenhagen, The Little Mermaid.

Hans Christian Andersen is probably Copenhagen’s most famous figure.  While we were in Denmark, we found out that the stories we loved as children are not really the happy-ending fairy tales we learned from Disney.  I was horrified to hear that in the actual book, when the Little Mermaid loses her tail, her new legs make it feel like she’s walking on glass and her feet bleed.  Then she’s jilted by the prince, who marries another woman.  The mermaid eventually dies and can’t get to heaven because she isn’t human and doesn’t have a soul!  Jeez Louise, try explaining that to a child!

After our Segway tour, we grabbed lunch at the Royal Café, famous for its smushie sandwiches.  We each had a sampler of three sandwiches.  I choose the fake duck (aka pork) with Waldorf salad, the roast beef with smoked potatoes, and the shrimp with chive mayonnaise.   Ohmygosh, I could’ve eaten 10 of those roast beef smushies!  They were like sushi rolls of creamy potatoes wrapped in roast beef.


We then headed over to The Church of our Savior to climb the spire.  There was only one way up/one way down on the spire so it got crowded fast!  Between the tight quarters, the slanting roof, and the strong winds, that was enough for David and Alyson.  Paul and I figured since we had waited in line that long to get to the top, we might as well stick it out.  But in all honesty, the view wasn’t that different from the top as it was from the first curvature.


From the top of the Church of our Savior, we could see Freetown Christiania.  It’s against the “rules” to take pictures inside Christiania so we snapped a few photos from above instead – muahaha!  After we left the church, we headed over there to check it out.  Freetown Christiana is trying to be its own separate state within Copenhagen, but in reality it’s a giant commune where its residents live as squatters and smoke pot all day.  It was such a weird place.  As we were walking through the “town,” David said he felt like he had found the Lost Boy’s colony.  They didn’t seem like the most productive members of society.


The residents of Christiana happened to be 
having a parade that same day...

Then we stopped at the bakery Lagkagehuset for some sweets and walked along the canals to the Opera House before boarding a water bus back to the hotel.


At this point, I have to mention how ridiculously expensive Copenhagen is.  We had heard about the outrageous prices in the Nordics, so we were prepared, and now I want to prepare all of you in case you ever head that direction.  A one-way water bus ticket across the canal (literally, a short length of water I could’ve easily swum across had it not been the freezing Baltic Sea) cost $20 for the four of us.  Our lunch of smushies, three tiny sandwiches, cost $30/person.  And in all of the restaurants we went to, they charged us for tap water!  The flight from London to Copenhagen was really inexpensive, but that’s where our savings stopped.  We tried not to do any currency conversions while we were there, and decided to just worry about our bank accounts after we got back home.

Another tip - dining out in Copenhagen requires reservations.  Whether you’re grabbing lunch at a more casual eatery, or having dinner at one of the Michelin-starred restaurants, call in advance!  David had made reservations for us on Saturday night at Grønbech & ChurchillWe had tried calling Noma, the #1 restaurant in the world for the past 3 years, but they are booked months in advance.  Even with their recent food poisoning debacle and drop to the #2 spot this year, they are booked solid!

Alyson and I are very similar in our eating habits.  We don’t eat meat off the bone (reminds us too much that we’re eating an animal) and we don’t like fish.  But dining in Copenhagen, it is impossible to avoid fish.  The first course of our four course meal at G&C was fish – brill.  But the way it was cooked and seasoned, it was delicious and tender.  Beside the main dishes, my favorite part of the meal was the palate cleanser between each course.  These consisted of different types of breads, and the bread in Denmark is like cake.  We started off with anise and liquorice soaked bread, then a cornmeal crusted bread, and finally a burnt breadstick with our potato morel cheese soup.  And of course, there was the dessert.  Heavenly chocolate ice cream with hazelnut and Jerusalem artichoke.

On our second day in Copenhagen, Paul and Alyson found an all-you-can eat breakfast buffet at a French café, Den Franske, on the Copenhagen Lakes.  After filling up on crepes and fruit, we walked to Rosenborg Palace to see the crown jewels.

The palace surrounded by its moat

Inside the throne room


From there, we took the subway to Tivoli.

The Nimb hotel and its matching peacock inside Tivoli

Tivoli Gardens is an amusement park founded in 1843, and was the inspiration for Walt Disney’s future parks when he visited in 1950.  We could definitely see elements of Disneyworld all around us.  From the themed areas like India and China, to the water/light show at the end of the night, it was like a smaller version of Epcot.


When we got to the park, it was lunchtime.  Like the rest of Copenhagen, Tivoli is home to award-winning restaurants.  You wouldn’t expect that inside an amusement park.  I had read about Andersen Bakery inside the Nimb hotel before our trip.  In the 1950’s, a Japanese baker came to Denmark to learn all about Danish baking, and then returned to Japan to share his new recipes with his home country.  Eventually his son and daughter returned to Copenhagen to carry on his legacy.  The legacy of hot dogs.

Andersen Bakery not only sells scrumptious pastries, cakes, and danishes, but also gourmet hot dogs.  So for lunch, we each had a hot dog from the bakery.  It was probably the best hot dog I’ve ever eaten.  It was glorious.

The sausage was flavorful in itself and then topped with pickled 
cucumber, ketchup, spicy mustard, and crispy fried onions all in an artisan bun.  I still dream about that hot dog.

Then we rode some rides!


Alyson is not the biggest fan of roller-coasters, but she did great at Tivoli!  She rode her first real rollercoaster, the Rutschebanen.  Built in 1914, the Rutschebanen is the third oldest roller coaster in the world and boy, did we feel its age creaking along the ancient wooden track.

After that, we went on some of the scarier rides, so Alyson was nice enough to take pictures while she hung back.  Here we are on the swings:


Then we did the bumper cars together and even took a turn on the merry-go-round.

That was a serious merry-go-round.  
I had to climb a ladder to get onto that giraffe!

In Tivoli, one of the rides was the Fairy Tale Chest, which is kind of like “It’s a Small World” where you fly through the air in a magical chest and learn all about Europe’s most famous fairy tales.  We’d already heard the true story of the Little Mermaid, but during this ride we also learned all about the Little Match Girl.  This is a tale about a child who wanders the streets on New Year’s Eve trying to sell matches for her abusive father.  She watches all of the families together for the holidays in their warm, cosy homes… and then she freezes to death on the side of the road!  Remind me never to buy a real book of fairy tales for Bailey, or any other children we know!

Paul and Alyson in their treasure chest learning all about characters like the Little Match Girl and Numb-Skull Jack.  Do you think he was in the inspiration for Simple Jack in Tropic Thunder??


On our final day in Copenhagen we didn’t have time for much, but we did have time to eat!

We grabbed breakfast at Emmerys bakery and then went souvenir shopping on Strøget, Copenhagen’s popular pedestrian street. 

For our final meal, we headed to Schonnemann to sample some traditional open-faced sandwiches, or smørrebrøds.  Our waitress brought us some aquavit to start our lunch.  The liquor was too strong for Alyson and me, but the boys enjoyed it.  


Schonnemann also brews their own beer, so the Tarts and David each had a large pint.  Then the waitress recommended that we try two sandwiches each.  

David's fried beef tartare

And my chicken bacon on rye with carrot chips, potatoes, and chives

After seeing the size of those things, I think one each would’ve been enough!  But they were really yummy, and a great way to end our culinary weekend in Denmark!

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Belated Birthdays

Back in April (yes, I’m behind on blogging again) we were able to celebrate David’s and Laura’s birthdays together.  Laura was in town and her birthday is just a couple of days before David’s, so it was perfect timing!

The House’s b-day celebrations spanned a couple of weeks.  Laura’s first gift came a few days before when we treated her and Karen to Matilda.  The musical was so much fun; those kids are amazing singers and dancers! 

Then a week or so after David’s birthday, he got a gift basket full of local Austin favorites like Rudy’s dry rub, barbeque sauce, and Rotel in the mail from his stateside coworkers. 

On top of the gifts, a new perk at Volusion is employees get their birthdays off!  So on the Friday morning of David’s actual big day, he slept in and I work up early to make him breakfast in bed.

Then hell broke loose at work.

Between last-minute meetings being scheduled and emails flying, I struggled to make the Boston Cream Pie pancakes I had found on Pinterest. 


I wasn’t even making the pancake batter from scratch, but that’s probably where I went wrong.  I read the directions on the back of the bag of mix for waffles instead of pancakes.  Waffles use more oil, which were turning the pancakes more into crepes.  So then I tore the kitchen apart trying to find our waffle maker to cook up some Boston Cream Pie waffles instead. 

No luck.

Finally, exasperated, hungry, and stressed out, I ran into the bedroom and yelled at David, “Get up and make your own damn pancakes!”

Poor guy… shouted at by his wife first thing in the morning on his birthday.  But I made it up to him by getting his gifts ready to open and making him lunch once all of my conference calls were done.  He was thrilled with the new neck-rest my parents got him for all of his upcoming travels, and even allowed me to put this pic on the blog:


Later that night we had tickets to see one of David’s favorite bands, the Ataris, at the Underworld in Camden.  The Ataris have been around forever, and was also one of my favorite bands in high school. 

They opened with “In this Diary,” my favorite song of theirs, which I also nominated as our official Class of 2003 senior song.

We knew it was going to be a good night when we saw this double rainbow at the tube stop!

The Underworld was a bit shady.  There were some scary pics on the walls leading down into the basement, where the stage and bar were. 

When I saw this guy’s photo, I started to question where we were...

The show was great, though!  We felt like kids again when they played all of their old songs, and the crowd started moshing.  There was even some crowd-surfing going on.  Moshing’s always scared me, though.  One time in college we went to Stubb’s to see Yellowcard and Something Corporate with my roommate and I got caught in the middle of a mosh pit.  I lost my shoe (I was an idiot for wearing flip flops anyway) during that first song and had to stand like a flamingo on the side for the rest of the night while Ankeeta and David danced around in the front row.

At the end of the show, David got to meet the lead singer, Kris Roe.  He told him it was his birthday and he first saw the Ataris 10 years ago in London.  When he said, “It was like going back in time,” I thought Kris might be offended, but he was cool about it.  He seemed like a really nice guy.


The next afternoon, Karen and Laura had planned a laid-back birthday lunch at the Greyfriar’s pub in Chawton, Jane Austen’s hometown.


The pub was right across the street from the Austen’s home, so after we ate we walked over to take a tour. 

David and I had some fun with the Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy cut-outs from Pride and Prejudice.

We all tried writing with a quill and fresh ink, which is a lot harder than it looks! 



It’s rare that we get to spend birthdays with our families anymore, so it was a nice weekend to celebrate David and Laura together.  Happy belated birthday! 

Friday, May 3, 2013

New Forest

For those of you that don’t know, I mostly work from home. While I absolutely love it, it does have some draw-backs. One of those is not being able to shut off. I have my computer open and pinging practically 24/7. Lately, work has been extremely stressful. I’ve spent the last few weeks dragging myself out of bed at 5AM and then back home at 10PM, spending days in workshops, trying to fit in bites to eat between meetings, and sitting on trains for hours a day commuting to various offices around the UK. So even though David and I had booked a weekend trip to Copenhagen with some friends in early May, I decided that I couldn’t wait that long and needed to get away from it all for a couple of days.

Where better to go than the New Forest?  It’s literally the middle of the woods – no Wi-Fi, cell phone reception, or real-world distractions.  The plan was just a relaxing weekend enjoying the beautiful Spring weather, immersed in nature.

The New Forest is a royal forest created by William the Conqueror and covers over 200 sq. miles of land on the Southern coast of England.  It’s home to thousands of wild ponies, donkeys, deer, and other wildlife.


It was such a long winter in England that the New Forest wasn't as green as we thought it'd be.  It looked like Fall with all of the leaves on the ground and the bare trees.

As the forest is only about a 2-hour drive from our home in London, we decided to rent a car for the weekend so we could bring Kirby, too.  This was his first road trip in England!  Poor guy is always left back in London at London Woof, a local boarder, when we travel...

Who am I kidding?  He LOVES London Woof!  He’s probably made more friends here than we have!

The New Forest is probably the most dog-friendly place in the world.  Much like the wildlife, they can wander the streets without leashes.  They are allowed inside the tourist office and museums and pubs.  And for places with restrictions, like the Beaulieu Abbey, dogs can hang out in special areas of the building with water to keep them hydrated and other pups to keep them company.

The three of us arrived in the forest on Friday night.  We had rented a cottage through a couple David found online through a Homeaway-type website.  They usually only let people book in 7-day slots, but made an exception for us as it’s still the low-season.  And on Sunday, they stopped by with fresh flowers and suggestions of places to see/things to do.  They were really sweet.


Kirby was very excited to be in a new house!  Whenever he does travel with us, he gets incredibly restless and wants to be out exploring and having fun all the time.  So just like at Possum Kingdom, he woke up at 4AM when the birds started chirping (it gets light VERY early these days) and wouldn’t really go back to sleep.  David and I finally gave in, and got up and at ’em by 7:30.  So much for sleeping in during our relaxing getaway…

During the drive in, we had already seen a ton of wild ponies along the side of the road (the speed limit is 40, but everyone has to drive at 20 to avoid hitting one of these beasts).

The village idiot - standing in the middle of the street, daring the cars to hit him!

But we were still so excited to walk out our front door and see the ponies up-close!

Haha, there weren't really ponies EVERYWHERE but I was still excited!

Throughout the weekend, we took lots of walks through the woods.  We started Saturday morning off on the trail near our cottage.



We saw plenty of wild ponies and even some donkeys.  The donkeys were so curious, they cracked us up!  When we were driving around, they would come up to the car to try and stick their heads in.


And the baby in this video was fearlessly trying to check out Kirby!


I wasn’t expecting to see Shetland ponies, but I’m happy we did!  They are so adorable!  I could not get over how tiny they were, and so docile. 



The local cows weren’t too friendly, though.  They did not like Kirby one bit, and would start to huff and puff when he got too close.  We made sure to keep the dog on a leash around them, so he wouldn’t get kicked.


During our walk on the wild side, we met a nice couple with an 11-month old black lab.  While Kirby and his new buddy were saying hi, the couple invited us to their local pub, the Turfcutters, for lunch and made sure to tell us that dogs are welcome, too.

David's yummy chicken and leek pie

This was Kirby’s second time at a pub, but his first time actually inside a pub.  Last summer, he just hung out in the beer garden with us.  Luckily he was worn out from chasing donkeys and swimming, so he was very well behaved.  It didn’t hurt that they had doggy treats at the bar and towards the end of lunch a black lab and a Scottish terrier came in and sat down right next to us.  It was like doggy daycare inside that pub!  I think Kirby really does have more friends than us…

Sooo... could I have a bite of that chicken pie???

After lunch, we needed to go to the market to pick up some things for the cottage, so we headed to the local village, Beaulieu.  I felt like we had just arrived at Disneyland.

Picturesque homes line the river, a 13th century palace overlooks Victorian gardens… and a monorail runs through the town.  A monorail?  We figured cars were not allowed inside the village because there were parking lots outside the monorail station, but when we started to walk towards the entrance, we noticed tills and realized there is a charge of $60/couple to enter Beaulieu!  With those prices, we really did feel like we were at Disney!

Instead, we headed to Lyndhurst, the capital of the New Forest.


Kirby running along a church wall

That weekend, we also made time to go to the coast so Kirby could take a dip in the sea.

It was too cold for us to swim, but it was a great chance to see the Isle of Wight and hang out on the beach. 

The Isle of Wight

A big storm passing us by

Empty beach huts.  It was a little too chilly to be hanging out at the beach.

Throw a stone, Dad!

The seagulls in England in this area look a lot different than American seagulls.



Mission accomplished – a successful, stress-free weekend away!