(Hi and also! I’m sorry this post didn’t get published on its actual date, it took me until now to get the photos resized. 🙁 I will try to be more on time with these in the future.)
The boat tour was hands-down one of my favorite parts of this entire trip. If you are only meeting me now, those words sound perfectly normal. For those of you who have known me for some time, you know that I have full-on Titanic syndrome and can’t get on a big boat. I am the person who embarrassed all of my cute girlfriends on a trip to Catalina Island by insisting they wear life preservers and I ended up sitting alone on the top deck of that boat to Catalina, wearing my smelly life vest, holding my plastic cup of wine and scouting for icebergs. I am a delight.
Sometime in mid-2008 I realized that I was actually OK on a boat as long as I could see the land and felt comfortably sure I could swim to it if need be. You may think this limits my choice BUT! compared to my staunch anti-boat stance of 1986-2007, it’s a vast improvement in maritime options.
Enter my newfound love of the hop-on, hop-off boat offerings of Europe. It’s a boat, technically, but you get all the fun feeling of boating with the relative safety of being on a Disney ride at Epcot Center.
But First, We Slept In
It wasn’t the hibernation of the first day, but we did manage to sleep in most days of the trip (a luxury!) On day two we left the apartment and headed out toward the area on the map where the canal boat tour departs. Along the way we found a knot of charming little streets right in the old town area and picked a cafe for lunch. That was where we discovered Jacobsen beer, which is an amber-ish beer that tasted great, and so ends my exhaustive knowledge of beer adjectives. I think I prefer to drink beer when traveling because it’s refreshing and more hydrating than wine.
We ordered lunch here, too and sat outside in the patio area where we could watch the world walk by. It was a sparkling, sunny day with just a few artistically puffy white clouds in the sky so of course it only rained about four times. After lunch we had ice cream, and then the Captain got an espresso, and finally we were off to get the boat.
Restaurant Jacobsen
Address: Kultorvet 2, 1175 København K, Denmark
Hours: 11AM–12AM
Phone: +45 33 14 70 99
Reservations: thefork.dk
Paradis Købmagergade
Ice Cream Shop
Address: Købmagergade 58, 1150 København K, Denmark
Hours: Open 10AM–11PM
Phone: +45 35 35 79 84
After we stuffed as much food as humanly possible into our bodies, we walked down to the canal to wait for the next boat. The weather ended up being really lovely, mostly sunny and cool (but not cold) and we only got the umbrellas out twice. One of the highlights for me was sitting down at the pier waiting for the boat and watching the Captain whip out his KNITTING project (!!!) and tuck into it like it’s just our everyday thing to be sitting in Denmark and knitting in public.
Also it was fun to be able to wear light jackets and hand-knit hats, something we can only do in Los Angeles for about seven minutes in January.
The boat came and we boarded (I got on first which made me very happy) and we picked a spot in the front. The boat tour here is totally different from Stockholm or Helsinki. There’s no pre-recorded track that plays as you meander. Instead, we had a real-live Danish person giving us an excellent and friendly tour in both Danish and English. It was so much fun. We got to watch the beautiful sights of the city go by from the comfortable perch in the boat and we got a nice little history lesson.
While we were on the boat, we spotted a cafe right on the water that was full of folks drinking and eating and toasting to us as we drifted by on the canal. I took some snapshots of the sign so I could look it up later on the map, because when you see something that charming you gotta go back and get a dose of cute. When the boat ride was over, we plotted a walking course straight to the cafe/bar/restaurant where we found a perch right at the water’s edge and ordered drinks and literally the best charcuterie plate I have ever had in my life.
Cafe/Bar on the Canal
Chistianshavn Bådudlejning og Café
Overgaden Neden Vande 29
1414 København K
http://www.baadudlejningen.dk/en/
While we were out on our adventures I tried a few shots with my iPhone fish eye lens. It was a birthday present (you can read all about it here) and I thought it was a really cool look for some of the pics I took on the boat.
We spent the rest of our time walking and sampling drinks and snacks from different cafes in the city and generally cruising at the most relaxing speed setting. This was a short trip but I would love to come back and spend a little more time checking out cultural highlights and getting more into the outskirts of the city, too.
Like most of Scandinavia, Denmark is extremely safe and modern. Everyone I met seemed to speak at least three languages fluently, the city is well-lit and easy to navigate, the residents have a friendly and easygoing vibe. And the food was great! What more can you ask for?
Well, more vacation days, certainly. I would have loved to spend a week there!
