Posted by Seth on July 14, 2009 under Trip Reports | 
Finding a hotel in Copenhagen was a challenge that I was not particularly excited by. The rooms were generally a bit more expensive than not and that was exacerbated by the fact that the US dollar still carries a rather poor exchange rate with most of western Europe. Still, when I stumbled across the Hotel 71 Nyhavn I was quite enamored with it. The hotel is situated right at the end of the the “new canal” that was built in the 1670s and is housed in two converted warehouses. The reviews online were somewhat mixed – typical complaints of small, hot rooms that one generally finds when reading reviews of European hotels from Americans not used to that style. Plus, the weather forecast that I had seen for Copenhagen had high temperatures in the 70s so the warmth wouldn’t be a problem. The rate was within our budget (for a basic room without breakfast included) so I booked away and hoped for the best.
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| The view of the canal from the back patio of the 71 Nyhavn Hotel (along with some supplies picked up from the Magasin du Nord around the corner) |
The location was truly wonderful. It is a quick 5 minute walk over to the Magasin du Nord department store (one of the largest in Scandinavia) and the associated metro and bus stations that can easily get you to anywhere in town rather quickly. The proximity to Magasin also gave us easy access to alternate dining options that saved us quite a bit of cash on breakfasts and one dinner. In the other direction we found ourselves right on the canal, with easy access to the ferries that ran up and down the main canal.
We even managed to score an upgrade to a Junior Suite, either thanks to dumb luck or that I noted we were celebrating our anniversary in the comments field of the reservation. The room was located up on the 5th floor and looked out onto a side street and the Nyhavn. As a converted warehouse and in keeping with the Scandinavian design aesthetic the rooms were somewhat sparse, with exposed wood beams. Being near the top of the hotel we even had the pleasure of a slight angle in the ceiling of our room near the couch. I was quite impressed with the room and the hotel and convinced that all the negative reviews were just plain wrong. And then night set in.
Unfortunately, because of the design of the hotel, there is very little air flow in the rooms. There is no central ventilation so the only real option is the window. And thanks to the very well sealed entry door there is no reasonable means to create a draft in the room to get the air circulating. Combining this with a bit of a heat wave that saw high temperatures spike into the upper 80s and our window facing westerly into the sun at its hottest time of day and our room became a bit of a sauna in a hurry. We had kept the window open but closed the blackout curtains and those seemed to also block the air flow while letting the noise from the Nyhavn drift up and into the room. Not good. I actually crawled over to the window and slept on the floor for a couple hours because it was a touch cooler there but not really enough to quell the sweating and general lack of comfort in the room.
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| The view of the Nyhavn canal from our room on the 5th floor |
We got a small fan from the front desk and left the blackout curtains open the following two nights, opting to use our own eye masks and earplugs instead. That definitely got around the heat and noise issues and I was able to sleep in the bed and actually enjoy the room quite a bit. But that first night was rather brutal.
Otherwise the hotel was really quite wonderful. The style and decor were right up my alley in the “boutique” genre and the location was absolutely top notch unless you are doing business near Tivoli Gardens and really want to be right there. But even if that is the case it is only about a 20 minute walk to the gardens and I think that the Nyhavn neighborhood is much more pleasant to spend any reasonable amount of time in. As long as you’re able to secure a fan from the front desk or Copenhagen isn’t in the middle of a heat wave the Hotel Nyhavn 71 is definitely worth considering as a base for exploring the city.
Posted by Seth on July 13, 2009 under Dining, Trip Reports |
I have no problems with paying a sizable sum of cash for a truly delicious meal. At the same time, however, I’m not particularly into paying $400-500/person for dinner, nor am I a fan of paying $100/person for blah food. Unfortunately, much of the dining in Copenhagen fits into one of these two categories – outrageously expensive or mediocre (at best) food. That proved challenging to deal with during our three nights in town, but we managed to get by while experiencing a broad spectrum of the options available and not going broke in the process.
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| A kid enjoying an ice cream cone one afternoon in Copenhagen |
First off, the bad. Our hotel was on the Nyhavn, a truly tourist district just across from the opera house. The quarter-mile long strip used to house Copenhagen’s red light district, with brothels and tattoo parlors along the sides of the canal. The storefronts have now converted to a couple dozen restaurants, bars and ice cream shops along the uneven, paving stone drag. And I suppose a few of them might have offered up good food or a reasonable value but we didn’t manage to find that. We did find a $5 scoop of ice cream that was OK and plenty of $12 beers. And we found a place that had a reasonable seafood salad and hamburger, but there is no way that the meal was worth the $85 that it cost. The food wasn’t particularly bad but the value certainly was. So dining on the Nyhavn was pretty much off the list for us, though hundreds of others didn’t seem to mind the mediocrity that it offered based on the crowds we saw. Indeed, I think that having it revert to its previous use might actually be a better use of the space, though that is a different story. And it seemed that dining around Tivoli Gardens was simply asking for more of the same so we were forced to search farther afield for a reasonable meal.
That search led to the Internet (of course) and then to an interesting concept restaurant called Madklubben (translated version here). The restaurant is a couple years old and takes after the typical Danish style of a menu offering a prix fixe menu rather than a la carte dining. But unlike most of the other good restaurants in town the price points on the Madklubben menu were very much in the $50-75/person range rather than the $300/person range. Toss in a bottle of wine from the rather broad wine list and the meal came out to about $200 for the two of us but I was much happier paying that price for the food we got than the Nyhavn meal the previous night. The menu seems to change roughly monthly so there is always something different to try should you go back again.
Our meal at Madklubben was a three course affair meaning that we tasted six different items between the two of us. The smoked herring appetizer was delicious and typically Danish. The broiled bone marrow was plentiful and served with a nice pesto sauce spread that was quite tasty. For main courses we had a pork belly and a brine-cooked beef. Both were quite delicious, with the beef approaching corned beef in flavor and the pork juicy and savory. And then we had the cheese plate and the ice cream with summer berries. It is hard for me to say definitively that any one of the items served was particularly a huge stand out winner and the meal wasn’t the best of my life by any stretch, but the food was all very well prepared and at the end of the night I didn’t feel any disdain or annoyance when the bill came. Oh, and the restaurant had a full-size plastic moose with a lamp sticking out of the head in the entryway which was quite entertaining.
And then there is the best alternative we could come up with for dining – DIY! We were fortunate that our hotel was very close to the Magasin du Nord, the largest department store in Copenhagen. And inside the store, on the bottom floor, there is a grocery, a deli, a coffee shop and a bakery. The bakery and coffee shop served as a great alternative to the $30/person breakfast in the hotel and we managed to put together a quite respectable dinner on our last night in Copenhagen with a quick tour through the aisles of the grocery. A block of cheese, a baguette, some sliced meats, some smoked herring, some grapes and a bottle of wine were more than enough to sate us and it was incredibly affordable. We borrowed some flatware from the hotel restaurant, took our food out to the waterfront at the end of the canal and had a fantastic picnic while watching the traffic pass by on the water and the people pass by on land. All in all, a great alternative to the high priced options of dining in Copenhagen.
And, if you dare, there are always the hotdogs.
Posted by Seth on July 3, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Our trip to Scandinavia was supposed to only really cover two countries – Denmark and Norway. Still, when I learned that we were going to be visiting a friend of my wife’s up in Helsingør, Denmark – just a 20 minute ferry ride across the way from Helsingbor, Sweden – I became somewhat hopeful of adding that to the trip. That hope was realized yesterday as we headed over to Sweden on the ferry for lunch and to wander around for a couple hours.
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| One of the many ferries serving the Helsingborg/Helsingor route. |
The ferry ride between Helsingør and Helsingbor is quick, cheap and easy, with three different companies plying the route and ferries running several times per hour. And at less than $10 for a return ticket the ferry is actually one of the more affordable things in Denmark. We hopped on Scandlines’s ship Hamlet (cute, right?) and cruised across the sunny calm waters and docked in Sweden about 20 minutes later.
Entry into Sweden consisted of just walking off the boat. No immigration checks. No customs. Nothing. Even if we had wanted someone to check out our passports or if we had taxable items on which we needed to pay duty that would not have been possible as those desks were not manned at the terminal. So we successfully invaded Sweden. We then set off to wander about downtown Helsingborg and grab some lunch.
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Locals enjoying the beach near the ferry terminal in Helsingborg, Sweden.
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Helsingborg, Sweden is a much prettier town than Helsingør, Denmark so wandering around was rather more enjoyable. The shopping areas seemed to be a bit more upscale rather than focusing entirely on selling alcohol to Swedes who cross over to Denmark to avoid taxes on their booze (truly the backbone of Helsingr’s economy). There are also the typical tourist sites, including the 500 year old church and remnants from an old castle. Both are quite well done, actually, and worth wandering over to see.
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The only remaining bit from the castle at Helsingborg.
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A rose out in front of the medieval church. Lots of roses all over the region.
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| One of the many shops in the shopping area of Helsingborg |
We also dropped in to the local Italian restaurant for a surprisingly good lunch. My preferred choice was not available and so I ended up with a curried shrimp over pasta, decidedly un-Italian but still rather delicious. And the carbonara was pretty delicious. As an added bonus, I also got to sample the local beer, a lager by the name of Spendrups. Nothing to write home about, but it certainly qualified as cold, wet and beer, three things that I needed at that point.
Overall I must say that Helsingborg is definitely worth the visit. It is a fun, quaint town and has more to offer than Helsingør, assuming that you’re not looking for Hamlet’s castle. Plus it meant that I got another new country on this trip which is always a good thing!
Posted by Seth on July 2, 2009 under Uncategorized |
With my rather increased international travel schedule (10+ countries
so far this year) my passport has filled up quickly. I'm down to only
one fully blank page now and only about 10 total blank squares. But
that shouldn't be too much of a problem to resolve since getting extra
pages is a simple process. At least that's what folks would have you
believe. I'm now on my 4th different US embassy and have still not
managed to grow my passport, with the latest setback coming this
morning.
It used to be that having pages added while in the USA cost money
while doing it at an embassy abroad was free. The fees no longer exist
for doing it in the USA but it still requires that the passport be
mailed off the Philly, processed and mailed back. And if you want it
handled quickly there is an expedite fee involved. Otherwise there is
the potential to be without passport for weeks rather than just a week
with the expedited service. Getting it done at an embassy makes a ton
of sense since it usually is completed in about 30 minutes and has
always been free.
And so I've tried to get additional pages at the embassy. How hard
could it be? Fill out the form from the State Department website and
just head over to the embassy first thing in the morning to get it
done. Sadly, it just hasn't worked out that way for me. A number of my
international trips this year have been over weekends so those were
immediately disqualified from contention, but I've had plenty of
eligible trips that have simply ended in disappointment.
First was the trip to Panama back in March. I contacted the embassy in
advance, got all the details and paperwork and then realized that I
had no chance. They require a full day for processing according to
their email and I only had about 3 hours on Monday morning to deal
with it. I suppose I could have just shown up and asked but it didn't
seem likely so I didn't bother. Plus, we were busy seeing Casco Viejo
that morning anyways.
Next up I tried for Bermuda. I had plenty of time on the island – two
full weekdays. And still no love. Their policy is even worse than that
of Panama, with all requests taking a full week to process. Apparently
they mail them back to the USA for processing rather than doing it
locally. Plus, they don't have any parking at the consulate there and
it isn't exactly in the middle of town. So that one was out, too.
I had a glimmer of hope for this visit to Copenhagen. The consular
services office would be open one of the days I was here and there was
no reason I could think of why they wouldn't be able to quickly add
the pages for me this morning. Well, they managed to invent one. I was
in the door at 9am, right when it opened for citizen services. I
presented my paperwork and passport and was told that it would be
ready on Monday. Since I'll be on a kayak in a fjord on Monday that
wasn't going to work so well. I asked for immediate processing
instead. The guy wandered off for about 5 minutes and came back with
an offer for maybe having it done at 3pm today. Only maybe and no
promises at all. Since we're headed to Helsingor now and won't be back
until late this afternoon that just won't work. I explained my
situation again and pretty much begged him to process it immediately
as I know can be done. I received a very polite "no" in return. And so
it was that I finished the visit to the embassy in 10 minutes, just
like everyone says it takes, but I managed to do so without my extra
pages.
We won't be near the embassy in Oslo while it is open so that is out
as an option. I might have to actually give in and mail my passport
off to be processed. I hate the idea of not having it available just
in case a great fare pops up and I definitely need it back by
mid-August with more international travel planned. But thus far the
embassies haven't been able to help me so I may have to give in on
this one.
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Where am I going today?
www.wanderingaramean.com
