Bec & Dave's Blog: Cold Enough for You?! Innit!!

Our flight landed in Copenhagen, Denmark, at about 10 on Tuesday morning. Dumping our bags, we took a walk to orientate ourselves with the city (where Blue mistook the art museum for the Carlsberg brewery, much to my amusement). We spent that evening at the Christmas markets in the Tivoli amusement park - very pretty with some great mulled wine and burning coal fires to warm us in the minus 2 degree temperature. We did think, however, that the 12 pound equivalent entry fee would entitle us to some rides as well - wrong!! Each ride was about 40 kroner (6 quid), with an unlimited pass 20 quid! Copenhagen, as we found out a number of times, is not an inexpensive city.
The next day, New Years Eve, we continued our exploring of the city with the King's Garden, and the adjoining Rosenborg Slot (17th century castle). As we were walking in the gardens, music reached our ears on the wind, so we followed it to see what was happening and stumbled upon the changing of the guards ceremony (we think, or something like that). Think Buckingham Palace with a handful of people instead of massive crowds. It turned out to be much much better than that, though, as the guards and the band marched through the city, before returning to the castle. For a moment we did think we were in with a chance of sighting Mary, and got excited, but no luck. Following that, we went over to Slotsholmen, an island separated from the city centre by a canal, but being NYE most of the museums and the palace there were closed for visitors, so we retired to our room for a few beers before venturing out later. Our first stop was a pub for a few more beers, then we made our way to the lakes at the edge of the city to watch some fireworks. Copenhagen doesn't have one official fireworks display; people let off their own fireworks all night long. Often you are surrounded by noise, at times it can sound like a heap of bombs are hitting the city. All those fireworks are quite spectacular though, and we heard them going off till 2 in the morning (could have been longer, but we fell asleep).
New Years Day we slept in, and then stopped at the outdoor ice rink for some skating. Dave, however, opted out after his last experience in London, so I skated on my own. The rink was fantastic - like a massive roundabout - and at 1pm on New Years Day there was only a handful of people; plenty of room to skate and pick up some serious speed! Afterwards we headed down to check out the Little Mermaid Statue, perched on a rock looking out to sea towards Sweden.
Our final day we had our fill of Danish food - Danishes (called wienerbrod in Denmark) and smorrebrod (little open sandwiches that are just delicious). We also visited the Hans Christian Anderson museum (delightfully nostalgic) and the Carlsberg brewery, before catching our late flight back to London.
A very pleasant, although REALLY cold, New Years break. We are still excitedly planning the first half of this year and are at the point now where we are both really looking forward to coming home! Work starts back again tomorrow (boooo). Next trip will be Ireland in a few weeks time.
Hope all are having a great start to 2009.

Watching fireworks in the cold on NYE