Posted by Naomi on Jul 3, 2009 in
doing stuff in Copenhagen To celebrate our tenth anniversary, last weekend we ate at Noma, a two Michelin starred restaurant here in Copenhagen. This is definitely my new benchmark. The food was exceptional in presentation and taste, and it was probably the most creative meal I’ve ever had. It was a meal that made me wish I was a foodie blogger, and was brave enough to take photos of each dish.
With the beautiful late sunset and moon rise over the harbour, it was a perfect celebration for a decade of marriage. (My only regret being that I chose not to have the matched wines, all of which were champagne …)
Posted by Naomi on Jun 28, 2009 in
doing stuff in Copenhagen Charlottenlund is about a twenty minute (for me) bike ride from our place. To take advantage of the great summer weather we’ve been having, Hugo requested a trip to the beach so we rode up and spent some time playing on the beach.
Last week, in addition to Whit Monday, we also had a public holiday on Friday for Grundlovsdag (Constitution Day … although every time I saw it written, I thought it was Groundhog Day). It was also Father’s Day AND the last public holiday for the year so we decided to use it wisely and caught an overnight ship to Oslo, to expose our children to a wide range of cultural experiences like Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” (there seem to be several version of this picture, which is fortunate, as it keeps getting stolen); the Vigeland Sculpture Park (see photos here) … and the ball pit on the ship.
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Posted by Naomi on Jun 1, 2009 in
doing stuff in Copenhagen (Deer Park Hill) Referred to as ‘Bakken’ (The Hill) is the world’s oldest operating amusement park. It is in Klampenborg (about a 35 minute bike ride, or 25 minutes on the bus. We should have ridden!). Hugo is something of an amusement park connoisseur so we decided to head out to Bakken on this fine, sunny public holiday Monday, along with much of the population of Copenhagen.
We did have a short walk around the deer park, but didn’t see any deer. The most exciting part of the day for Hugo was finding a ride almost the same as the Panda ride at Tivoli. The most exciting part for me was that we ate a meal, in an actual restaurant, as a family, without (too much) chaos. YAY! It was fun, but probably not quite equal to Tivoli (Frommer’s calls it “Tivoli on a bad hair day”). Hugo ate the most enormous fairy floss I’ve seen on one stick. I honestly expected him to be ill afterwards but once again, his capacity for non-nutritious food exceeded my expectations.
Posted by Naomi on Apr 13, 2009 in
doing stuff in Copenhagen 
We spent two days over the weekend at Legoland, Billund. Billund is a short plane ride from Copenhagen but taking into account getting to the airport, and the inevitable delays, not to mention crazy security at the airport, next time we will probably just hire a car and drive.
Hugo’s favourite part of legoland was the mine train (a nice, sedate ride that didn’t quite meet adrenalin junkie Sophie’s excitement expectations). She preferred the pirate boats (with the scary dark tunnel). Daddy loved the brick shop (which was just like a lolly shop, where the bricks are sorted into colour and shape, and you buy them by weight) and my favourite part was the Bob the Builder 4D movie (yes, there was a 4th dimension!).
Miniland was strangely similar to Cockington Green in Canberra.
So much lego! One of our meals even had lego shaped chips … it was a lot of fun and we seem to have doubled our lego stash (Daddy got a bit carried away in the brick shop :P).
More photos at flickr.
Posted by Naomi on Apr 10, 2009 in
doing stuff in Copenhagen Tivoli Gardens is one of the oldest amusement parks in the world, right here in Copenhagen. It opened for the new season on Wednesday and we have been looking forward to this since we arrived in Copenhagen! As the Thursday before Easter is also a public holiday here, we caught the bus into town to visit. The weather was fantastic, the rides were fun, and the fairy floss was enormous! We have season passes, so we will definitely be spending a lot of time there over summer.
More photos at flickr.
Posted by Naomi on Apr 4, 2009 in
doing stuff in Copenhagen We finally went to see her - a bit sad that it’s taken over three months even though it’s only a ten minute ride away.
Edit - I’ve come back to say, yes - she’s not quite as exciting as you’d expect but compared to the Mona Lisa (queuing for hours, looking at this postage stamp sized painting enclosed in a huge glass box for 0.3 second before being shuffled on) it wasn’t to bad. The weather was lovely, there were other things to look at, it was close to home and no queues! (Although a busload of tourists arrived as we did … they all stood looking at it, vaguely puzzled like perhaps they were expecting something more? bigger? different?).
Posted by Naomi on Apr 2, 2009 in
doing stuff in Copenhagen This afternoon we spent quite a long time playing at Remisen which is a big indoor playground right here in Østerbro. The building is the old tram depot, so it’s enormous and it has heaps of activities, but Hugo loves the lego - they have eight enormous crates of lego! Sophia, blatantly flaunting the “not for under 5s” rule for lego with just a small amount of it.
Remisen is run by the local Kommune/council and is free of charge! Great for days when the weather isn’t good enough to play outside.
Posted by Naomi on Mar 28, 2009 in
doing stuff in Copenhagen I am not a huge fan of modern art generally but I do like Henry Moore 
Louisiana is a beautiful location. It has an outdoor sculpture garden overlooking the Øresund, and an amazing children’s wing with drawing/sculpting/painting studios. It’s just a half hour train-ride north to Humlebæk Station. Hugo would probably spend every weekend there creating amazing masterpieces in clay if he could. He also quite likes to see the exhibitions, and enjoyed the current Max Ernst a lot (particularly the sculptures, and some of the paintings). Sophie liked the chocolate muffin at the cafe, collecting pine-cones in the sculpture park, and creating a masterpiece of her own.
We are looking forward to Granny visiting later in the year, and we hope to take her to Louisiana while she’s here because we’re sure she’d love it too.
Posted by Naomi on Feb 14, 2009 in
doing stuff in Copenhagen 
This weekend we caught the train in the opposite direction up to Helsingør to visit Kronborg Castle (which was where Shakespeare set Hamlet). Today was another beautiful sunny (freezing!) day, and the wind off the Øresund as we walked around the headland to the castle was VERY brisk! The Øresund at this point is only 4km wide and you can see across to the Swedish town of Helsingborg, a fact that was extremely uninteresting to Hugo.
He was much more interested in the Castle itself, especially when we reached the children’s room, with lego galore. They also had a table set up for making masks, but I think this might be for the Danish Carnival (Fastelavn ) celebration, not a regular activity.
