I was going through some pictures from our summer adventures and came upon this one. This was a cool little viking shop in Copenhagen, hardly visible unless you happened to stumble down the little street it was on. We passed it a time or two when we were avoiding the crowds on Strøget but it was closed. My son wanted to see the contents as did I. So on our second to last day in Copenhagen we made a special trip to find it (which wasn’t easy–it’s easier to find when you aren’t looking for it).

The place was owned by a guy who looks like a viking. He was a very nice man who spoke perfect English. He spends his days in his shop making viking wares by hand.

Another reason I share this photo is it captured a bit of my Copenhagen bike which I miss so much.

Posted on November 20th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: copenhagen. Comments: None

Does the title of this blog entry shock you? It shouldn’t. You see it all over Copenhagen, Denmark on t-shirts, hats, jewelry, etc. It stands for F.C. København or Football Club Copenhagen which is the local football (soccer) team.

We went to one game while in Copenhagen and had a blast. They were playing against the Cliftonville FC from Ireland and made the Irish team look really bad. The final score was something like 9-0, but they completely dominated even more than the score indicated.

You’re safe! No, wrong sport. I’ll stick with baseball in the future.

Posted on September 9th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: copenhagen, pictures. Comments: None

Since returning from Denmark I’ve checked in daily with Copenhagen Cycle Chic. This entry is my tribute of sorts to that wonderful blog. I miss my daily bike rides around Copenhagen. I try to get on the saddle a few times a week now that I’m back home in Ashland, but it just isn’t the same. (Not to mention the huge hill I have to climb to get back to my house…)

Posted on September 6th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: bikes, copenhagen, pictures. Comments: None

Denmark’s National Museum is located in Copenhagen. The ground floor consists of Danish and Human history. On the upper levels there are exhibits for each country. I don’t know if this is always the case, but the day we were there the upper levels were nearly completely void of visitors.

The collections were still impressive. Either no one knows of them or people get so tired from the ground level that they never make it up the stairs. One of the problems may be that while the collections are massive, there are no stories or detailed descriptions to go along with them (like there are for the ground floor exhibitions).

I headed upstairs to check out the Japanese collection. On my way I noted the impressive collection from Greenland. Surely the Nationalmuseet has the finest and largest assemblage of items from Greenland given Denmark’s history. I was amazed at the number of items they had, the condition, and the age.

Anyway, I eventually headed past Greenland and on to Japan.

The Nationalmuseet had several display cases with Ainu artifacts. Ainu are the original settlers of Japan and now nearly extinct. I was more than a bit surprised to find this much Ainu material in Denmark.

Samurai armor and helmets seem to be a centerpiece of these types of foreign exhibits on Japan.

Finally, we shall end on the mask exhibit. Having recently read The Street of a Thousand Blossoms and being a daily visitor to Ojisanjake’s blog, I found this portion of the Japan exhibit to be very interesting. I especially liked the bottom six masks which show the process from block of wood to finished mask.

Posted on August 31st, 2008 under Denmark, Japan. Tags: copenhagen, museums, pictures. Comments: None

We interrupt our normally scheduled blog adventures in Paris to try to make some room on my overloaded bookshelf.

Here is what I have for sale:

• Rick Steves’ Paris 2008, ISBN: 1566918634, I paid $19.95, yours for $10
• The Paris Mapguide, ISBN: 9780141469041, I paid $10, yours for $5
• Top 10 Copenhagen, ISBN: 9780756627881, I paid $12, yours for $7
• Copenhagen Encounter, ISBN: 9781741792232, I paid $11.99, yours for $8
• Rick Steves’ Great Britain 2004, ISBN: 1566915279, I paid $18.95, yours for $1
• Rick Steves’ Italy 2005, ISBN: 1566916798, I paid $19.95, yours for $1
• Eyewitness Travel Guides Italy, ISBN: 0789493861, I paid $30, yours for $2

For those in the USA, shipping is $3 for the first book and $1 for each additional book. Ask if you are from outside the US about shipping rates. Email me if interested.

Posted on August 22nd, 2008 under Denmark, Paris. Tags: copenhagen, guidebooks, guides, Paris. Comments: 1

We are actually back from Paris already. I pre-scheduled the past 8 or so blog entries so that I wouldn’t have to spend any time blogging in Paris. Now that our European adventures are over I can turn to Paris for the next little while. I’ll have some more entries on Denmark in a few weeks. 

On our journey from Copenhagen to Paris we learned three things. First, never trust that your pre-arranged taxi will actually show up. Two, always have a backup plan. And, three, leave yourself more time than you will really need to get to the airport.

We had someone else call in Danish to reserve an early morning taxi for us. They said we were all set, but no taxi was there when scheduled. We waited 15 minutes and then I headed for a pay phone. When I finally got through the person on the other end either couldn’t hear me or they were the only person in Denmark who doesn’t speak English. (I take that back; neither of our Copenhagen taxi drivers spoke English.) We were now sweating it, but we had left plenty of cushion time. We walked to the Forum Metro station with the intent of taking the train to the airport, but along the way we hailed a cab and made it in plenty of time.

We couldn’t leave Copenhagen without some more cloud displays so Mother Nature cooperated by given us multi-layers at take off.

You can see from the above image (after enlarging it by clicking on it) that we flew on Air Berlin. Everything was great on Air Berlin but the food. The sandwiches were horrible.

South of Copenhagen the clouds broke for some nice views of the countryside. We didn’t fly direct to Paris. Hence, the plane never got that high in the sky.

These islands off of the main Denmark masses all seemed to be populated. I’m not sure which islands these are, but they may have been part of the Rago Sund near Southern Zealand.

The plane wasn’t full so Ellie’s stuffed animal, Maja, even got a seat.

This is Dusseldorf, Germany where we made our connection to Paris.

Posted on August 11th, 2008 under Denmark. Tags: clouds, copenhagen, pictures, Travel. Comments: 1