Prague pt. 1 - Vysehrad and stolen honey

I apologize for the long delay. We met up with Oliver and Nina in Germany, and it's been non stop ever since. I had this written up, but haven't had a chance to go through my pictures, so for now, all you get is words, but hopefully it will assure everyone we're still alive and enjoying ourselves. We're in Burgundy now, and I think the coming few days will be a bit more relaxed, so pictures from Prague to follow. 

Our first full day in Prague, Jay took a long lunch, so we decided to walk over to the Vysehrad, which is somewhat removed from the tourism of old town (there were still plenty of tourists, but it wasn't at all crowded). The Vysehrad is an old fort on top of a hill that was first constructed in the 10th century, and has been added on to for many years since. Jay read that it was a great view. We knew that implied there was a hill, but we weren't quite ready for THAT hill. The view was amazing. There was also a little gothic cellar that had been made into a mini museum about the Vysehrad, and the admission was $2 so we went for it. They had artifacts from stone age times, to the construction of the fort, to the 18th century. After that we walked around the graveyard of the Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul, which is the burial site of many famous Czech's. I swear, you must be required to have an extensive artistic portfolio in order to be permitted to design a memorial in this cemetery, because they were works of art.

After that we went into the Basilica, which was positively stunning (I'm really running out of adjectives here). There were some beautiful carvings, but the best part was that just about every surface was covered in ornate designs and frescoes inspired by Alfred Mucha (Probably the most famous of the Art Nouveau artists, also makes sense when you realize that he was Czech and is, in fact buried in the graveyard behind the basilica). I love Art Nouveau, so I could have sat their and admired the paintings for hours. Also of note, they had a number of reliquaries containing bones from saints, many of them not even labelled, but there was one that was labelled as the shoulder blade of St. Valentine. As Jay said, it's no shriveled head (referring to Drogheda), but it's something.

Some of the frescoes from the Basilica, courtesy of Wikipedia. It was dark, and no flash was permitted, so I thought this was better than one of my shots of the frescoes. These are just a few of them. 

After that we returned to the apartment so Jay could do more work, then we got dressed up and headed down town to wander while we waited for it to be time for our reservation at Alcron, a Michelin star restaurant. We walked along Wenceslas Square and went into a couple of interesting looking stores, but Jay was starting to get bored (we probably could have left the apartment a little later than we did), so we walked in the direction of Old Town and went to see the Astronomical Clock. It's smaller than I thought. I didn't have my camera with me, but Jay and I are going to go back with the camera to get more pictures of old town. Eventually it was close enough to time to go that we walked over to Alcron, we got there early, fully prepared to sit and wait, but they were able to seat us. It's a tiny little restaurant, with only ~8 tables, and all decorated in an Art Nouveau style. With their menu, you have a number of courses to choose from and you can order between 4 and 7 dishes, and you don't need to order them all at once, they allow you to get a few, enjoy them, and then order a few more, which means dinner ended up taking about 4 hours, but it was a wonderful 4 hours. Jay and I also opted to get the wine pairings, so forgive me if I get a little wine nerdy in the following descriptions. Also, I would like to thank Aunt Betsey and Uncle Craig for their generous graduation gift, which made this amazing dinner possible.

They started us off with an amuse bouche which I remember was delicious, but that's pretty much all I remember about it, a bread course which was basically an excuse to try their different compound butters (they even had some toasted gluten free bread for me). The four butters were flavored with chili, sea salt, nori seaweed, and yuzu, and they were all delicious. Jay got to choose a couple of pieces from their bread tray, which had about 12 kinds of bread on it. It was impressive. Then we got our second amuse bouche, which involved a mushroom carpaccio and was, again, delicious. Finally, the sommelier came over to pour the wines for our first course, and I wished I had a pen and paper to take notes. He poured me a Austrian Gruner Veltliner, and as he was describing it, I noticed the other bottle he had in his hand (for Jay) and I guffawed. It was a gewurztraminer. This is really only going to be hilarious to people who drink wine with us on a regular basis (Oliver and Nina) but Jay hates gewurztraminer. He thinks it tastes like soap. However, this was a Czech gewurztraminer, so he gave it a shot. It had all the lovely floral and lychee nose of a typical gewurztraminer (I told you I was gonna get wine nerdy) but it was very dry and lacked the floral notes that make Jay dislike it. He enjoyed it and it ended up pairing really well with the food. For our first course I got (I'm typing this up from the little souvenir menu that I brought home), Marinated Scottish salmon with avocado cream, grapefruit and wasabi marshmallow. Jay got Tuna sashimi with tapioca, daikon, and parsley mayonnaise. These descriptions don't really do anything justice. But it's the best I can give you. When the sommelier brought the second wine pairing around, I guffawed again, I got a delicious rose, but Jay was getting an Alsatian wine. Jay is pretty open-minded in his wine tastes, and is certainly less picky than me, but there are two things destined to make him expect the worst of a wine, the first is that it’s a gewurztraminer, which we already encountered, the second is a wine from Alsace. And God forbid it's an Alsatian Gewurztraminer. This wasn't a Gewurztraminer, thank goodness, but instead of Sylvaner. In Jay's words, it was okay. At a place like that you could probably say "I don't like it" and he'd find something else for us, but Jay and I aren't those kinds of people, so he just enjoyed it with his food. He got a Green pea soup with saffron potatoes and garlic foam that was barred to me due to the presence of cream. I got an Heirloom tomato salad with watermelon, buffalo mozzarella, black olive, and a sun-dried tomato granita. If only ALL salads were like this salad. Once again, the food was delicious. After the first two courses, I no longer have a clear memory of what we were drinking, except that at one point I had a Czech Pinot Gris that was semi-sweet and YUMMY. For the third course Jay and Seabass with cauliflower and squid tagliatelli, which to quote Jay was "weird" (just the tagliatelli, the rest was delicious). I had Pan fried duck foie gras (yes I'm a horrible person, no I don't regret it) with rhubarb, strawberries, hibiscus and ginger foam (and finished with a grating of frozen foie gras at the table). My foie was amazing. After that, I got seared sea scallop with broccoli, quinoa, and pancetta, which was tasty, but couldn't stand up to the previous course for me. Jay had the Slow cooked octopus with a chorizo emulsion, black olive tapenade, and crispy capers. Finally, I had Pigeon breast and leg with sour cherries and cocoa beans, which I forgot to take a picture of until I'd all but licked the plate clean, and Jay had beef filet and shoulder with miso glaze, and a jasmine tea smoked potato puree. None of the desserts on the menu were safe for me, but the waiter suggested and selection of sorbets, which I thought sounded lovely. The tossed together a gorgeous plated dish with three flavors of sorbet, which was the perfect way to end the evening for me. Meanwhile, Jay ordered some ginger tea. When the tea came, it arrived with a tiny jar of Bonne Maman honey. I commented that it was adorable, Jay looked around him, shoved it across the table at me and said "Quick, put it in your purse." And I did. All the while silently laughing so hard that I was shaking and crying. Jay holds that it's what his Bubbie (I am approximating the correct spelling here) would have done and he has no regrets. I informed him that we will be keeping that jar for the rest of our lives as a souvenir. He agreed.

By then it was nearly midnight and we were quite tipsy. We sought out a cab that would take credit cards, made it home and slept wonderfully.

Relaxing in Vienna and the train to Prague

You may have noticed that the font recently got bigger on the blog. This is because I was told that the previous font was really quite small, and for the sake of making it easier for my grandma to read the blog, I wanted to make the change. Hope it's not too annoying for anyone else, but grandma tops you. So there. 

On to today's post!

Vienna was mostly relaxing. It's a very cool city, and when Jay wasn't working we had a lot of fun just exploring. It's one of those places where you can just wander, turn a corner and BAM there's a gorgeous church, or a quirky shop, or a old wine shop. We did go to a couple of tourist attractions. 

Winding streets in old Vienna 

Look! A church!

First we visited the Vienna Clock Museum, and if you don't know why that would interest us, you obviously never visited our apartment in Ann Arbor. We like clocks. I consider it a miracle and an impressive exhibition of self control that we've only bought one clock so far on this trip (in Budapest). It was very cool, with clocks and watches ranging from the 14th century up.

One of the coolest things about the clock museum were all the astronomical clocks. These were clocks with many dials and hands that, in addition to telling time, kept track of the date, and the day of the week, the month, the current zodiac sign, the movements of the planets, the phases of the moon....it goes on and on. This clock was a particular masterpiece of (if I remember correctly) a perfectionist monk who designed the clock and did all the calculations himself. The clock is actually quite bit, about seven or eight feet tall, but here I zoomed in on the face. 

A few of the pocket watches that were part of a collection assembled by a wealthy woman in the 1800s. She not only collected the watches, but also had the tools and know-how to maintain them properly. They also had the book in which she kept track of her collection on display and her penmanship was stunning. 

The Hofburg

More of the Hofburg

A view of Parliament from the Hofburg

After the clock museum we headed across the Danube to a place that has gluten free Weiner Schnitzel. They were also able to make it dairy free for me. It was delicious and the weather was perfect so we got to eat outside.

Most of the time in Vienna, we cooked for ourselves, since we had a lovely full sized kitchen to work with. Sorry, Gnegy Lab, I won't be able to give you much in the way of dinner recommendations, but I think you'll be hard pressed to find food that is anything less than delicious in Vienna. Also, Peggy, you'll be happy to know that they are very good about "lactose free" cooking.

Saturday we went to a flea market that was just down the street from our apartment, adjoining the Naschmarkt, which is a giant open food market, kind of like the French Market in New Orleans. The flea market is held every Saturday, and it was very cool. It took a lot of self control not to buy a carriage clock I saw there, but Jay stopped me (fair, since he'd be the one carrying it). There were lots of tchotchkes and random things, and then you'd look at booth and see a roman coin. Yep. Just sitting there. It was lots of fun until is started to get crowded, and then we made our escape back to the apartment for more coffee.

After that we walked over to Hofburg and went to the Imperial Butterfly garden which was mostly just tourists playing with their DSLRs (Yes, I was one of them) and children ignoring the "don't touch the butterflies" signs. It was cool and pretty, and after that we had a picnic in the park with some sandwiches we'd made earlier and I had fun feeding the ducks the remainder of my gluten free bread. Most of them seemed fine, but I saw one spit it out. 

I spent a solid 10 minutes trying to get a picture of one of these guys who would flick his wings open and shut. He was a flirt. This guy, however, posed for me. 

There were lots of pretty flowers in the butterfly house. These are not some of them. These are plastic flowers that they spray with honey to attract the butterflies down to eye level. As you can see, they are somewhat effective. 

One more butterfly picture. 

We walked around the downtown shopping area and went in search of two things: apple strudel for Jay, and some sorbet for me. We found both. Jays strudel was yummy, and the sorbet I got was some of the best I've ever had. We also wandered in to a giant wine store, which was entertaining for a little bit. We ended up returning to the apartment on the early side, cooked a delicious dinner, drank some more of the young Heuriger wine and relaxed. Austrian Heurigers are cosy pub/biergarten style places that serve the very young wine of local wineries. We didn't have a chance to go do one, but we did find this Heuriger wine, and it was delicious and cheap and we weren't really fussed about making it to an actual Heuriger, since I probably wouldn't have been able to eat anything there anyway. But, hey, you, Gnegy Lab, try to visit a Heuriger. I think you'll have fun. (For those who don't know, my former lab will be visiting Vienna soon for a conference and I was supposed to do some scouting. I failed, but I think they'll have a good time anyway).

Sunday morning we took the train in to Prague. I was dealing with a back spasm, so it wasn't the most delightful couple of hours, but I got to read a lot of Laurie King.

We had a fun moment getting onto the train. When the train pulled in I noted the two economy class cars closest to us, one already had quite a few people, one was almost completely empty, so I told Jay, lets go to that one. And we tried. But it seems like everybody on this platform didn't get the memo about how damned inconvenient it is to lug a giant roller bag around Europe, so we got stuck behind a couple of girls carrying suitcases bigger than they were (for their five week trip. *scoff*). Jay and I ended up being ALMOST the last people on the train. But it ended up being okay, cause almost the entire crowd on the platform was going for the other car, because that's where their assigned seats were. We didn't have assigned seats on our tickets, so we spent some time seriously worried that we'd done something wrong or that we were going to get yelled at in Czech. We didn't do anything wrong, and had no trouble finding seats. Getting off the train was another exercise in feeling superior about my backpack vs. rollerbags. I was weaving through the crowd like an old pro to get away from all of them. My feeling of superiority was slightly damaged about 20 minutes into our walk to the apartment when my back was spasming and I was hungry and tired. But I still have some serious contempt for rollerbags, at least in any situation where you aren't just checking them on a plane. Anyway, we made it to our apartment, met our hostess' husband and their ~2 year old daughter who is a little angel. She knows how to say Hello in English but then she just babbled at us in Czech and we happily acted as though we knew what she was saying. The apartment is absolutely perfect. A lot of the other places we've stayed have had a lot of charm, but this place feels like a home more than anywhere else we've stayed.

After dropping our things we went for a late lunch at a Thai place we'd passed on the way to the apartment. It was amazing and I ate WAY too much. We stopped at the grocery store on the way back to get things for breakfast. We also got some stuff for dinner, just in case, but we didn't think it likely that we would be eating again that night. We were mostly right, we had pudding for dinner. (Yes, Jay ate pudding. This is the second time. He said that it wasn't as tolerable now that he didn't have 3/4 of a bottle of wine in his system).

The view of Prague from our attic apartment

We slept great, we're taking a long lunch to explore the area, and we have dinner reservations at a Michelin star restaurant tonight! Eastern Europe is cheap and it's awesome. More to come!

Jay's Bed Blog - Bed 9

"Bed 9?" you ask. "Did I miss a whole entire bed?" you continue.

The answer is no you did not miss a whole entire bed, but I did. I had one job. But alas, we left Budapest yesterday (very early) morning and only too late did I realize that I had not snapped a picture of the bed.

So this time I remembered to get one nice and early (even making Sarah play as if she was sleeping even though she has been awake since 8 AM).

Without further ado, Bed 9:

Budapest!

To start off, we LOVED Budapest. It's gorgeous, and full of history and almost shamefully inexpensive. There is also a surprisingly good selection of gluten free places, and menus tend to be well labeled. Since it's so inexpensive, we actually ended up eating out quite a few times. 


Our apartment was lovely and big and right on a very busy square with lots of bars and restaurants. We could have lived without that last part, but it was nice to have so much space to spread out. Our hostess was also very sweet. The poor woman had just fractured her L1 vertebrae a few days earlier and was strapped in to a brace. Contrary to what would have been entirely acceptable, she did not cancel our reservation and met us at the apartment to give us the keys. She was very nice and made some great recommendations, and I'm only sorry that her injury meant that we couldn't spend a little more time with her. I hope her recovery is fast and without complication. 
We were away from the very touristy part of town, which meant we had about a 15 minute walk to get to anything really interesting, but that's no big deal to us, by now. Jay's knee is mostly doing okay. We got into Budapest quite late on Sunday and after a very fast and quite thrilling cab ride, we found ourselves at our apartment. We crashed almost immediately. The next morning I went to the grocery store and had fun smiling blankly as the woman asked me questions in rapid hungarian when I checked out. It all worked out, and we had eggs for breakfast. Once Jay was done working for the day we wandered around the neighborhood a bit and then went to an entirely gluten-free place called Koles (there is probably supposed to be an accent on one of those letters, or something).

There is something uniquely terrifying about your first meal out in a foreign country, but she spoke enough english that we made it work. I had this pea dish with some pork that was delicious and she gave me WAY too much and I was STUFFED. Jay had a yummy turkey thing with rice. They had some gluten and dairy free desserts though, so we took them to go. All in all, we got two huge tasty satisfying meals and two desserts to go for about $12.

Then we walked over to the river and saw the Chain Bridge. The Chain Bridge was the first bridge permanently connecting Buda and Pest (we were staying in Pest). Legend has it that it's designer was so proud of his creation he challenged anyone to find fault the bridge. When someone found that the lion statues on either side didn't have tongue, the designer reportedly committed suicide. Legends surrounding monumental structures in Europe tend to involve suicide frighteningly more often than not. It is a beautiful bridge though. 

We walked across and then decided to take the funincular up to Buda Castle. Everything up there was closed (galleries, museums, etc.) but the castle was still open to walk around and it was pretty cool being up there when it wasn't super crowded with tourists. 
After wandering for a while we headed home.

We sat down to eat the desserts from Koles after our walk around Buda castle . One was a cake with a sort of creamy layer on top (made with coconut milk). It had a raspberry syrup on top, but the creamy layer had a lot of something very herbaceous in it, maybe basil, and it made for a weird bite. I was interested enough to keep trying, but Jay decided to go for the other dessert that we'd bought. It looked kinda like a big cake ball coated in poppy seeds. Turns out it was a giant rice pudding ball (sorta), with a strawberry sauce poured over it. I think it was fairly flavorless, Jay heartily disagrees, plus it was an awful texture for him. He had two bites and spent the next 20 minutes silently shuddering.

So the dessert part of our evening was something of a bust. Though I was pretty entertained by Jay, so not as bad as it could have been. 

Tuesday, we wandered around and eventually found ourselves at a tapas restaurant that we had read would be safe for me. We got to try Jamon Iberico for the first time. I get it. I get the hype and expense. That stuff is AMAZING. 

One part of chain bridge

Chain bridge again, with Buda castle in the background.

Buda Castle, lit up at night.

After than we wandered some more (in case you haven't figured it out, Jay and I get a fair amount of joy just by exploring a city on foot) and eventually made it to a coffee date with Miki, a friend of Oliver and Nina's who visited the University of Michigan philosophy department a few years ago. He took us to "the best coffee place" which also happened to be the only coffee place on Jay's list of cafes he wanted to visit, and we had absolutely delicious coffee and spent the hour chatting with Miki until it was time for us to get to the Duna Palota (Danube Palace) for our boat tour. We went on a sunset boat ride the Danube, drank cocktails, and I took a billion pictures, in the hopes that one of them will be good enough to get blown up and go on our wall, because the Hungarian Parliament is quite possibly the most beautiful building I have ever seen. After that it was home again for more sleep.

Jay on the boat tour, Parliament in the background.

Hungarian Parliament

One of the springs off of Gellert hill.

On the left is the Gellert Hotel, where we went for the baths. The right is an ancient citadel. 

St. Stephen's Basilica, which we passed on the way to Parliament. We weren't able to go in though. They have strange opening hours that didn't work out well for us.

The ceilings in "the golden staircase"

More opulent beauty at the Hungarian Parliament

The chamber of the former House of Lords. The parliament is now unicameral, so this room is largely unused. 

One of ~88 statues depicting different vocations of the Hungarian people at the time the building was constructed

Wednesday, we realized that we had lots of things that we wanted to do, so Jay took the day off. Budapest is well known for its thermal baths, so we made a point of visiting the baths. None of the Roman baths survive, but the many of the Turkish baths are still operating. We went to the Gellert baths, which has several indoor and outdoor pools of varying temperatures. Jay decided he just wanted to live in the 36 degree C pool, until we went into the 40 degree C pool and he changed his mind. Neither of us had the nerve to get in the 18 degree C plunge pool. 

After the baths, feeling fantastically relaxed, we walked up Vaci street, where there is lots of shopping to be done. We had plans to go to a place called Fruccola for food, based on allergen friendly research, but it was too packed and it was clear that the staff were not well informed enough to help me avoid milk. It's funny, they're really good about gluten free here, and they're also very good about lactose free, but they don't make the distinction with dairy free. Frequently they'll use lactose-free milk in things, which is just irritating. Oh well. We went across the street to a restaurant (the name eludes me, but it wasn't worth remembering). When I told the waiter my issues and asked what I could have he said "chicken with vegetables" which I think means he just wasn't willing to do the work to see if substitutions could be made anywhere. I don't really blame him, cause I'm sure its a pain in the butt, but a waiter who takes the extra steps to help me eat well and eat safely usually earns themselves a place in my heart for the rest of time. Anyway, we were too hungry to seek out a different place, so I resigned myself to the "food as fuel" way of life for that meal. 


After that we hustled north to Parliament, where we had booked a tour of parliament after Miki had told us that the inside was comparably beautiful to the outside. He wasn't lying. So. Much. Gold. And some beautiful statues. It's a stunning building with an interesting history and I'm really glad we went on the tour. It was finished just at the turn of the century (~1902). With very few exceptions, the materials and labor that made up the building were all from Hungary. The few exceptions usually had to do with marble, since that's not one of Hungary's more abundant resources. A mere 20 years later the country lost 2/3 of its land following WWI. Much of the building was rebuilt after WWII, but the stained glass was the original, because when the war broke out, they removed the glass from the windows and stored it safely in a basement until the war was over. We also saw the Hungarian crown, which is at least 800 years old, but pictures weren't allowed in there and there were some very large and intimidating guards with swords to make sure we obeyed. 
 After visiting Parliament, Jay and I went to Culti Vini, which is a wine bar where you can try many different wines (all Hungarian). The wines are dispensed by a machine, and you have a card that is loaded up with a certain amount of money so that you can spend it where you will. There was one Tokaji dessert wine that was ~$20 just for a tiny taste. We didn't go for that one. We did try several wines though, including a white merlot which was just wacky. And then we spent some time with the dessert wines and settled on one that we could bring home for something special. Like, in 20 years. Seriously, this stuff ages well. After that it was back to the apartment. We stopped at Koles (from Monday) on the way and got dinner to go, went out for one more glass of wine and some host-gift shopping for our next stop. We crashed after that and got up early to catch our train to Vienna. Now we're in the apartment of a former exchange student that Jay's family didn't host, but interacted with quite a bit. She and her family are out of town, so we've got the apartment to ourselves, and it's gorgeous. We did a little wandering around, once Jay was done working, but then we retreated to the apartment cooked a meal, and enjoyed a bottle of Heuriger wine. It was about $3. It's young, refreshing, and absolutely delicious, the Austrian response to Vinho Verde. Tomorrow and Saturday will be fairly low key, and I'm looking forward to relaxing.  

Budapest preview

We've had two busy days in Budapest, and have another one planned for tomorrow, so it's going to be a little while before I get up a new post.
Here's picture of the view from Buda castle that I took with my phone to hold you over.

Copenhagen!

The view from the stairwell at Rosenborg Palace

On Friday afternoon in Copenhagen, after figuring out how to take the train in, Jay and I went to see the Crown jewels at Rosenborg Palace and spent a little time walking around the National Gallery. At the National Gallery I saw my very first Da Vinci in person (Madonna on the Rocks). It was awe-inspiring. Nobody was doing anything like what he did at that time. I could have stared at that painting for hours, identifying all the intricacies.
We also did a quick walk through of the Botanical Gardens, which I love, but we'd had time to explore the last time we were here. 

The botanical gardens. It was a tad cloudy that day.

Spiral Staircase inside the Palm House

More Gardens

Garden selfie

Jay among...sugar cane? Bamboo?

Pretty flowers and fun with my camera

One of many amazing ivory carvings
at the treasury at Rosenborg castle

Carved amber at the treasury

The treasury also houses the Rosenborg wine which the royal family drinks once a year and for special occasions. It was kept in barrels until the 1980's when it became necessary to bottle the wine. It's a white wine from the German Rhineland. It dates from the 16th century, though it was topped up a couple of times over the next hundred years. The barrels were lost and reclaimed in the war with Sweden in 1659. The guide claims the wine tastes like dry sherry. Jay and I laughed at this and said something along the lines of "Yeah, dry sherry that's been open for 10 years." We also heard a tour guide telling his group that he heard the wine tastes terrible. But hey, tradition. This picture was taken from the official website, because I didn't have the patience to take a good low light photo.

What's that? Oh, just a brace of pistols made by Samuel Colt himself and gifted to King Frederick VII by Abraham Lincoln. No big deal.

Renee Descartes. I've seen this picture in so many books and online, that it was a little surreal to see it in person

Selfie in front of some cool art in the "Modern" section of the gallery.

After that we returned to Hans Ole and Laila and had a wonderful dinner, lots of conversation, and lots of wine.

Really. A lot of wine. Really GOOD wine.

I'm out of practice.

I adore Hans Ole and Laila's house, so we've agreed that we'll be checking back with them in three years to see if we can buy it (a joke, mom, don't freak out). We also heard about how they visited California in 1989 and happened to be in San Francisco when a little earthquake occurred. You might have heard of it. It was a fascinating story.

Saturday morning Jay and I woke up a little slow (I wonder why…) and got ourselves packed. The train station wasn't far, but Hans Ole was kind enough to give us a ride, which was a huge relief with our backpacks. We said goodbye to our wonderful hosts, got into the city, and surprised our host by getting their an hour early. We apologized profusely. She was very kind and generous about it. After we dropped our bags off we headed out and took a leisurely walk to the Copenhagen Street Food Market on Paper Island. This thing was amazing. Something like 80 different food carts, of all kinds of ethnicities and nationalities. It had been recommended on one of the "Gluten Free in Copenhagen" lists that Jay and I found and I'm so glad we went! We ended up both getting our lunch at a Thai cart and then following up with sweet potato fries. Jay was so excited about the options that he seriously considered getting one more thing, but considering how full we are, and the fact that we ended up perfectly satisfied with blueberries and a banana each for dinner, I'd say it's a good thing he didn’t.

Copenhagen Street Food. This picture doesn't really capture it, but it was a very cool place.

After that, we walked over to Christiania and into Freetown, which is just a fascinating little hippie microcosm. I think it's residents view it as a sort of Utopian experiment. It's completely walled off from the rest of the island except for a few entrances. It's also home to the famous Pusher street, where no cameras are allowed. This is because about 15 kiosks line the street, each selling variations on cannabis, all out in the open. I think there have been some crack downs lately, because a lot of the sellers were wearing masks, which made things a little creepy. And no, we did not partake, merely gawked. And tried not to inhale too deeply.

I generally avoided taking pictures in Freetown, but this one specifically said "Pictures okay" so I went for it. 

The sign welcoming you into Freetown. On the other side, as you exit, it says "Now entering the EU."

After that we headed back to the apartment to rest because we knew we wanted to stay late at Tivoli. Around 7 we headed to Tivoli (on the way we stopped to get the previously mentioned blueberries and bananas). You're allowed to bring food into Tivoli, and most of the restaurants have entrances that open up onto the street, so the food prices there are pretty reasonable, but Jay and I weren't hungry, and reasonable in Copenhagen is still pretty expensive.

Another addition to our growing collection of selfies, this time at Tivoli

The Pantomime theater

One of the Tivoli Peacocks

A rainbow showed up over the Pantomime theater while we were waiting for the show to start. I had to do some weird things with the color to make the rainbow show up here.

We had lots of fun wandering around the park and people watching. We saw a free pantomime show at the pantomime theater and I convinced Jay to go on the Star Flyer with me (and it took some convincing), which is a swing carousel that takes you 80 meters above Tivoli for an amazing view. It was getting dark, so it was hard to see recognize much of the city, but Tivoli looked amazing all lit up. The funniest part:

Jay likes having his feet on the ground. He was not enthused about this ride, but agreed because the trip to Tivoli was my birthday present from the Danes (Thank you everyone!). So we get into our little swing after waiting about 20 minutes and the ride lifts us up. I love this sort of thing, but I was still white knuckling it on the bar in front of me. We got up, spun for a minute and then the ride stopped and started to lower us. It was a short ride, but this seemed shorter than what we'd seen. So we get to the bottom and then watch the ride operator chide a couple who had been swinging their chairs so that it was dangerously close to twisting while we were 80 meters up. The ride operator was not amused. He told them off. And then we got to go AGAIN! Jay was THRILLED.

The Star Flyer

The Star Flyer again

The view was amazing, but I got super chilled, so then we had to go find somewhere warm to sit and drink tea. Once we warmed up we went to see the light show, which was absolutely stunning. I didn't know you could do such things with light and water and smoke. I didn't take pictures, because they could never have captured it, but it was well worth the entrance fee to watch. After that we hung around to see the Tivoli fireworks and then headed back to our room to sleep.

A picture of the Tivoli light show taken by a more skilled photographer than I (René Juncker). Thanks Google. Still doesn't quite do the show justice. 

Sunday morning we packed up, dropped our bags at the baggage storage center at the train station and went in search of coffee. We headed to Coffee Collective in the Torvhkmlmdhfjdmmdnf… and then got some baked goods at Naturbageriet (gluten free bakery) including an absolutely awesome gluten free carrot cake (more like a muffin).

Hand brewed coffee at Coffee Collective in Torvjmdhsh

Bubble man on the Stroget

Hoop acrobat on the Stroget. Tried to get some better action shots, but my camera apparently didn't like not being able to focus on a moving target.

The head of a giant Lego dragon at the Lego store on the Stroget. One of many impressive Lego sculptures we saw. 

We walked around some more and stopped to watch some entertainers on the main shopping street (the Stroget, except with an o with a slash through it), but Jay's knee was bothering him, A LOT, so we decided not to do any more touristy things that would require lots of walking and headed in the direction of lunch. On the way we were discussing his knee, and he was talking about how he walks, and how he thinks that hurts his knee, and we realized that he has been walking wrong, probably for a significant chunk of his life. So I started coaching Jay on walking correctly (which I was only able to do thanks to hours and hours of perfecting my step in high school marching band) and Jay found that when he stepped the "right" way, his knee didn't hurt. Any time he'd forget and slip back into his old way of walking, his knee would twinge, so I'm pretty sure we've identified the problem. Fortunately he'll have lots of opportunities to practice walking correctly over the next weeks. We got delicious sushi for lunch (who'd have thought that an archipelago nation would have good fish?), and, largely due to my own incompetence, I accidentally consumed dairy. Which meant I spent the next couple of hours, navigating a crowded city and getting to the airport, as a dopey space case that couldn't think straight. Jay did good though. He took care of me and we made it safely to the airport. The flight to Budapest went off without a hitch. More to come!