We are driving next to a beautiful lake headed for the famous Sognefjord, a few days earlier…
We left new ark at 5 Something pm for the night flight which is too early to be a night flight; I watch Paul and 2 other movies instead of sleeping and Alla didn’t sleep either and chose to study the new camera features (no more complaints of faded out photos), we took some aerial photos of Copenhagen at around 7 on a Sunday and tiredly went through the shortest security ever. We hopped on the train to the central station and walked to our hotel and crashed for a few hours.
Woke up and started seeing the city from the city hall where I climbed an elephant (various cities have various painted status ( cows, guitars, bulls etc.. Copenhagen has elephants (didn’t ask why)). We also climbed on the knee of Hans Christian Andersen.
Sorry, don’t stop me now is playing and it fits the ambiance perfectly , ok back. We walked in the main street of strogt (I think). This is the last day of a Jazz festival and various bands are playing everywhere. In every plaza live music is heard and its not real jazz, it more rock/jazz and some classical music and we join the crowd and enjoy good music while passing street entertainers, fountains , cathedrals and simple and lovely ancient streets. We passed by the canals close to the parliament and the status of bishop Absalom (the city founder and the name sake of our cheap hotel) where Alla took a shnuch on the bank and I read the guide. We continued on the strogt , arrived and the new haven port for more live music and the best ice cream around (according to the guide…but he did not specify how far is around…it could be the best in this store), but it was not bad, we passed by the theater overlooking the Opera house on the other side through ameilnburg gardens to the royal house of the queen , her consort and prince. We toured the big plaza and took some photos with the Danish guard and were told by a gourd to move away (these gourds did not tell woman tourist to move away, so several options; I smell, the gourd was a homophobe, the guy was homophile but was afraid to show the love in public, discrimination in the royal court) we walked to the castellat garden which is an old fortress with grass everywhere , pond with ducks and the famous statue of the little mermaid. We walked all the way back to our hotel stopping for low quality shwarma (we try to eat cheap and tasty).
The next morning we rented bikes and drove to the main palace (forgot the name) and walked the many lovely rooms, we tried the smorsbrod, the Dansih open faced sandwich , mine with fish and Alla’s with lax .. ok jump to the present, the part above was written 4 days ago
Today we woke up at the eppel bed and apple hostel in a tipi tent, had a relaxed morning trying to figure out where to go next after Stockholm (though we are still in Norway) and enjoyed our super market bought breakfast of bread cheese and pastrami or nuggati (a local brand of nugat/chocolate spread, very good) then we headed for adventure.
River canyoning- we wore wet suits life vests and helmets and headed for a freaking freezing river. The first splash in the water was a cold rush, but after that we got used to the water and used ropes to climb along waterfalls then slid down the waterfalls or jumped in from way up high. It was a difficult but amazing activity, climbing the ropes on the slippery stones, avoiding sharp stones, and trying to keep warm was hard, we had about 6 parts of sliding down or jumping in, then we headed back down the river and did all the slides again and in the end had a final jump from 8 meters to a black pool and if you are not careful, you will hit rocks, you have to jump in the right way, luckily we had a guide (a student of outdoor activities, yes, it’s a degree here…awesome) who helped us along. We were six, a german couple with lots of studs, tatoo’s and more piercing, but very nice and a dutch family who will be sending us photos I hope (the mom stayed to take shots and did not participate). Alla was climbing like a water spider and made the last jump (did I mention 8 meters high) easily. After the jump my legs were shaking from the adrenalin , the cold, the rush and the fear (if it doesn’t scare you, don’t bother), after that we were hungry and went to the market again and got some more cheese, bread and pastrami and other things but also a grilled chicken. We eat sandwiches most of the time, store chicken Is a treat. We packed out packs with most of the food we have and headed for a mountain hike, 2 hours up a steep hill. It started raining right away and we walked slowly up the wooded path with our ponchos; when we crossed the timberline, the rain stopped and we hiked on with spectacular views of the fjords and green valleys, we took more photos of views that kept getting better and better. We reach a sunny summit of mt molden and enjoyed our dinner on top, relaxed for a while, marked the territory (Alla developed a new thing, and that is peeing next to and on every major Norway attraction, next to the glacier, on the top of mount molden and just before the final jump in the river) so when in Norway, don’t drink the water…). Nearly forgot, the chicken. So alla puts the chicken in a bag, and with a full backpack she carries the poor chicken in hand up the mountain, she eats a drumstick (pulke) at a nice view point, and that’s it, I didn’t try it either, but the poor grilled chicken made it to the top on the mountain and is probably the highest place a grilled chicken ever got, if it only knew how special it was, I will tell it tomorrow while I eat it. after an hour on top we hiked down and it began raining again as we crossed the tree line. After that we returned to out hostel for a well deserved shower and blogging.
Ok, back to Copenhagen
We toured the palace then rode on passed the spiral tower of the stock exchange towards Christiana. Christiana is a free town, the residents do not follow Danish law, but their own, of course it’s full of drugs ,but this unique colony has rules (no hard drugs, no weapons, no violence….etc ) and its full of hippies and artist. Copenhagen has no plants, and here there are plenty of (none drugs) plants. It’s a lovely green forested area situated on an old army barracks partly sourounded by water (not sure if canal or river or whatever) but with ducks, swans and herons). We walked around the neighborhood seeing all the drug sellers, great ambiance and irregular setting. It started pouring (or was it just a drug smoked induced hallucination?) , don’t worry, we don’t touch the stuff, but it’s fun to watch. Alla cant keep her hands to herself when we went into a store selling wood art and touched an object despite the ‘don’t touch me’ notice next to it. The artist, an old hippy looking guy told her not to touch anything else (the wood was covered with some liquid, he didn’t want her to pass it to the other pieces), it rained hard so we stuck around , and this artist is working on some amazing wood piece for years and hopes to never finish, he also smoked hash next to us, we wished him to never finish his work and I agreed to his plan of “if I become prime minister, my first low is to ban cigarettes filters”, because the street is full of them, has is better since all of it burns… I like that low, but don’t think this guy will be prime minister in the next election. He told us about the place and then we left. We were there for a few hours then after tasting some Danish Danish, we took the bikes and rode to Rosenburg castle and view some amazing paintings, very unique clocks ( no photos from this place, we had to pay extra for that, we should have…) various swords and the crown jewels of Denmark, a most impressive place with very nice gardens, then we went to Tivoli gardens, the 1st amusement park in Europe for a potentially fun evening. We paid for entrance (not cheap) but didn’t take the all inclusive package, which would mean I would drag alla to every single ride, twice. But instead we were to pay extra per ride, so we ended up cruising the gardens, taking flowers photos, watching pantomime shows with clowns, but not paying extra, thus not really having as much fun as we could have, for me the gardens are nice but somewhat disappointing(true, we didn’t do any ride), after that we hunted for food in the closed store and ended up with a salmon sandwich for alla, then rode the bikes more and returned to the hotel.
Next morning we took the train after a bakery stop to Malmo, then took a bus to the Malmo air port, took our rented car and headed for Oslo
Good night folks , need some sleep, glacier kayaking tomorrow
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