Copenhagen

It's June 9th and we've just flown from Toronto to Frankfurt with Air Canada and then from Frankfurt to Copenhagen with Lufthansa. Due to stormy weather in Toronto, all our flights were a little behind in schedule, but otherwise everything was smooth, with great service.

As we took a taxi into the city - a Mercedes station wagon was the only choice for four of us with all our luggage - the skies were a 15 degree gray, but fortunately there was no rain.

We're staying for two nights at the 71Nyhavn, right in the heart of the historic district. This is a small boutique hotel with small but efficient rooms, right on one of the canals running through the old city.

None of us had gotten much sleep on the flights, but we opted to stay up and try to quickly get ourselves on the European clock by tomorrow.




So after a brief freshen up, we headed out for a walk about this district, before going for dinner to a nearby restaurant called Restaurant Koefoed, specializing in Danish fare, in particular from the island of Bornholm. We discovered very quickly that this is a "happening" area and even though it was only Thursday night, it felt more like Saturday. We sat at a sidewalk cafe for a drink and did some fascinating people watching. The number of well dressed young women on bikes - the city is full of old fashioned looking bikes - was very interesting.


At Koefoed, we opted for the 5 course tasting menu, which surprised the heck out of us. Talk about a gourmet delight!
First dish was white asparagus with dried scallops, ramsons and malt. That was followed by "Sol over Gudhjem" which was a smoke filled pot of smoked herring, soft boiled quail's eggs and chives.

The main course was rooster breast, with cucumber, herbs and white asparagus. I'm pretty sure we'd never get a rooster in Canada as tender as this one was. We finished off with two desserts - the first being rhubarb sorbet with apples, chocolate and macaroons finished in Calvados; the second being strawberries in buttermilk with a basil sorbet. The only drawback, other than the hefty price tag - 495 DDK per (around $100) - was that as it got later, we faded rapidly and barely made it out of the restaurant with our heads off the table.

After a rejuvenating walk back to the hotel, we still called it a night. Tomorrow would be our big tour of Copenhagen.