Postcard Perfect

I accidentally slept in until 11 AM and woke up still not feeling great. Boo :( At least it was sunny out! This is the first time that it hasn't started raining the second we walked outside in what feels like forever!

We took Jan up on his suggestion to do a harbor tour of Copenhagen to soak up the good weather. The harbor tours are boat cruises through Copenhagen that leave from Nyhavn - an adorable man made canal lined with brightly colored houses. It is exactly what you would picture Scandinavian houses on a city waterfront to look like, it's just like a postcard! Jan gave us a little insider tip - there is a very visible company at end of the canal closest to the city center. These are expensive. But, if walk up the canal like 30 meters there is another less visible company that gives you basically that same hour long tour for $5!!! Sweeeeet. Their $5 price is cheaper than the expensive company's children's price. So we figured that was a fantastic way to spend $5 and a sunny afternoon and hopped on just a few minutes before it left. I got a nice seat on the 'window' side (but the windows can be pushed up and towards the center of the boat so they're not clouding the view) and got my camera ready.

The harbor tour was really cool. I don't think I necessarily learned that much, it was just SO nice to be out on the water in the sunshine, slowly going past beautiful buildings. I am just so excited to be in Scandinavia! It was a really pleasant experience though - definitely a quality use of $5. Some things that were on our tour:
The Free Town of Christiania - 30+ years ago some hippies knocked down a fence to an unused barracks or something and declared themselves a separate Free Town from Copenhagen. They have their own post system, their own laws, and are seriously just a bunch of hippies hanging out in this area they claimed. The government was going to allow it only temporarily but has since decided to allow it to continue as a 'social experiment'.
The Navy ships,
The Royal Yacht,
The Opera House, given to Copenhagen by the shipping giant Mersk. This is why the front of the building looks like the back of one of their huge shipping ships.
Where the Little Mermaid used to be (Copenhagen is famous for this tiny little statue but it's on loan to Shanghai for 2010 for an Art Exposition so there's just a boring white sign in it's place above the rock where the statue sat).
The Castle, which originally was built by 4 rich noblemen and later it became the royal residence of the Danish royal family - this is why it has 4 practically identical buildings that don't look that much like an actual palace.
We saw some other stuff too but I don't remember it. It was all just pretty.

After the harbor tour, we walked past a tourist information center where I picked up a plethora of handouts and brochures and free tourist guides and magazines. I had read about a specific publication called Copenhagen This Week in a guide book before I left. It's supposed to be this free guide of things to do in the city. But, the people at the tourist center said that it didn't exist any more. One strike against that guide book. There were enough other materials to take though, and I left the building feeling like a walking tourist information center.

Then we were on our way to Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museet, or the New Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum. The guide book I read back home said it was free on Wednesdays and that it had a number of Rodin sculptures. Well, it's Wednesday, and I love free stuff and Rodin, so it seemed perfect. However when we got there, there were signs that said only Sundays had free entrance! And real entrance was like $10! Strike two against the guide book! But, me being me, I went up and asked somebody at the ticket desk and just said that I'd read in a guide book that the museum was free on Wednesdays, was that not true anymore? She said, no, that's not true anymore, it's only free on Sundays....BUT - BUT!!! Today is the Crown Prince's birthday, so the museum is free today! What the heck?! How random is that / HOW GREAT is our timing?! / How awesome is it that I go up and ask what most people probably would think are dumb or inane questions?! Woohoo! Rodin only really got one room in the museum but it was all great stuff. Most of his works are about expressing emotions through sculptures, so I find them very interesting. And of course, The Kiss and the Thinker were there. By the way, I'm really confused about how many "original Rodin" copies of the Kiss exist, since I've now seen three of them (Paris, London, Copenhagen). Wow that sounds pretentious. Oh yeah, something cool about this museum is that a lot of the artwork, especially Rodin, was bought from Rodin himself by Carl Jacobsen and later donated to this museum. Crazy! The museum also had a lot of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian art which was interesting. I really liked the Egyptian art because they had actual tablets with hieroglyphics on it that were sweet!

After the museum, we began aimless walking with the pretense of looking for food. Food is usually our pretense. However, we are so frugal and so picky that we usually end up walking for hours and then either just going to a grocery store or getting something cheap because we're starving. We accidentally found the city center area which was filled with restaurants, expensive stores, and tourist souvenir shops, so it was actually really cool to walk through all the pedestrian streets and squares bustling with people. After a few hours of this, we headed back to Jan's flat where we told him we'd meet him at 7 PM. On the way, we stopped at a mini market where I picked up what looked like chicken flavored Ramen noodles, 2 potatoes, and 1 shallot. This cost me an amazing $1.5! Pretty awesome for being in Denmark.

When we arrived, we found that Jan also had not eaten yet, and so we ditched our lame idea of Ramen and went to a real super market (the kind that we were hopelessly looking for the whole evening). Jan tried to describe his idea of dinner to us and while we didn't totally understand it sounded good so we followed him around picking up ingredients. Back home, I tried to help and he wasn't having any of it. He just worked away by himself, and soon called us to dinner. Dinner was AMAZING! He made a version of Rosti, I think. In Switzerland, Rosti was just potatoes (I think). Here, it was potatoes, onions, carrots, and peppers which all got shredded and mashed up together. In a separate bowl flour and eggs were mixed. Then it all goes together and you make little vegetable pancakes that get fried in a skillet with oil. On top goes a sour cream esque sauce that also had green onions in it. It was seriously amazing! And Jan didn't let us do a thing except for eat. When I asked him what I could do to help clean up he told me I could "go to my room." Thanks, Jan. Laura and I insisted though and the three of us whisked the kitchen clean; after which I remarked to Jan to look at how fun that was!

Oh I forgot to mention earlier - Jan has never hosted anybody from CouchSurfing before! He's surfed through Eastern Europe, but never hosted. You would never be able to guess this though! Picking us up with beers and making us dinner were so great. And when he picked us up he was prepared to pay for our train tickets to get to his flat but we didn't need them since we have our Eurail passes. Then when we got home, he had a map ready for each of us! It was crazy awesome. It's really exciting to be the first surfers, because I am pretty sure we will leave a great impression :) Especially since Americans tend to have such an awful reputation, it's nice to just break that mold right away.

After dinner, we decided not to go out for any reason since I'm still sick and we have a lot we want to do tomorrow. I'm feeling a bit better but I want this cough to go away!


Quotes:
Hilary: "What can I do to help?"
Jan: "Go to your room."

Accomplishments:
More great timing with free museums (p.s., good job, Crown Prince, way to have a birthday today!)

Travel Tip:
Never hurts to ask questions...