serious question: what is with all the bloody bikes? if they're not running, they're cycling; it's so unusual! i suppose it's not, really, but in comparison to home, it is. anyway, we wandered back on track from the marble church until we found ourselves in our lunch spot; kongens nytorv in nyhavn. probably the most picturesque slice of water I've ever seen, we wandered up one alley and down the next, taking in the colour of the buildings, the music from the buskers, and all of the lovely smells from the street vendors selling their festive foods.... yumm!
we stopped in at the oldest waffle house in nyhavn for exactly that; waffles and a hot bevvy to warm the belly. we sat and watched the waffles being made, and giggled at finally discovering the one english word that would undo all the great danish translation we'd so far encountered; lid.
"leed? what iz leed?"
lid. LID. like, the top of the coffee cup *including "top" actions*?
"oh, we do not hev leed"
cue me pointing at the stack of take-away coffee lids like a baboon... further wanderings to the next point on our map found us bouncing like baboons on some secret trampolines along the waterfront. why? why the hell not! how fun does that look? oh, only the most fun, that's how much.
i'll give this town one thing; their use of vibrant colour in their architecture is simply amazing. bright greens, oranges and yellows bombard the grey cobblestoned lanes and bring so much vibrancy to the city. old and new, regal and common; this place is my kind of city. not a dull moment here! we wandered around the stock exchange and through the grounds of another palace, before making our way to christianshavn, where we'd planned to take in the christmas markets in the free town of christiania...
aaaand what a disappointment they were. we'd been told explicitly to head to christiania by a few different people, and yet when we got there, we were mostly underwhelmed. the freetown of christiana (wish i'd read more about it before going there) hosts an annual christmas market that claims to be an "unconventional yuletide fair reminiscent of an oriental bazaar". the website boasts a "multitude of stalls offering pine handicraft items" (yay!), "hand-made jewellery" (yes!), "paper cut christmas decorations" (woo!) and more! what it really offered was a giant shed that stank of weed and cigarettes, and a hundred zillion people shuffling from one dodgy stall to the next. of the - maybe twenty stalls, we truly enjoyed only one. there we bought a few hand painted cards as gifts, but that's it. we did not stop to eat, we did not stay to look around the town. we hightailed it and left.
what we could see of the town, it was mostly closed for "business" anyway, sadly. well i say sadly, but i'm grateful because i'm sure boyfriend would have made me walk around the dirty, weed-scented town longer than was entirely necessary. don't get me wrong; power to the people. i'm very impressed that they live the way they do - in what's basically a commune-type estate, but it's not for me, and i was not enjoying myself. we'd had such a great day until that point, and i was generally really annoyed at myself for making us go there. i was a mopey git for the rest of that day, much to boyfriend's general annoyance.
nothing that a burger and frittes and a lindsay lohan/mcfly film didn't rectify -- well, in my case anyway. boyfriend's burger was less-than-tasty i'm told, so his day went steadily down the shitter from there. oh well, there's always tomorrow... more on that another time.
