Rainy day Magic on Whit Monday

The weather changes to grey overnight. It rains. We pull out our rain shells and take the Metro downtown. Our plan today is to hang out indoors with Vikings at the National Museum for a few hours of immersion into historic Denmark in a very historic building. Like much of Copenhagen’s cultural experiences, there’s something enticing for every age. We lose ourselves in Viking lore and antiquities of other ancient peoples.

After, we walk to the medieval Stroget pedestrian street (now a shopping and eating Mecca) for a quick refresh of tea and cheesecake before embarking on an hour long canal boat tour that was both breathtaking and relaxing. So much of Copenhagen’s history and architecture orients toward the sea so it’s amazing to view land from the sea side of things. A must do for visitors. And, yes Sharon, we spied the “iconic” Little Mermaid statue but without having to deal with the tourist throngs on land!

We also spotted hundreds of runners crossing the various canal bridges we passed under. Monday was Whit Monday, a national holiday, and also the annual Kings Run day and people here take it seriously. Runners from all over the city climaxed their route near our last stop of the Day, Nyhaven, for their after race libations.

Nyhaven is a gorgeous, canal side neighborhood of cafes and rainbow-colored buildings. It’s also the ultimate, picture postcard image of Copenhagen and rightly so. The boats in the canal, the brilliant reflections of buildings on the water, the lively street life and, even, pristine public toilets!

After all this activity, we returned home, had our daily wine and congratulated ourselves on a perfectly spent rainy, grey day.

Dinner changed that mood! Feeling adventurous in our now familiar, multi-ethnic neighborhood, we were excited for an Ethiopian dinner of stretchy njera bread covered with various vegetarian and meat preparations that we’d eat with our fingers.

What we weren’t prepared for was a non-English speaking, clearly untrained server who understood nothing we said or gestured. We ended up with passable food after much struggle and sending things back. Then the bill came and the restaurant didn’t take credit cards! We were told Denmark was a cashless country so we never hit the bank. Fortunately, I had a small stash of Euros from previous travels and we handed it all over not sure how the exchange rate worked!

Walking back to our hotel, we consoled ourselves with gelato cones to remove the bad taste left by our last Copenhagen food experience. We started packing that night for our trip to Aarhus in the morning. We had logged another unintentional 16,000 steps. We’d rest up on the upcoming three hour train ride.