Day One: Copenhagen

After the longest and most exhausting flight experience of my life we were here and we hit the ground running. Stopping by the hotel to try to check in was the first task. Sadly arriving two hours later than planned still wasnt late enough to check in. We dropped our bags and headed off to the pedestrian street for lunch.
The pedestrian street is Copenhagen's version of the 16th street mall in Denver. Many of the same stores are there as well. Ugh, globalization... We had lunch (falafal pita for me) and then Natalie and I tried to get a coffee at a hip little coffee bar/bakery. It took two tries but eventually we got it. :)
The National Museum was next and most of us on the trip have lamented that we were just too tired to enjoy it properly. Just the same, we spent about two hours searching the museum and trying to find the answers to questions like... "What is the relationship between Vikings and the current Danish Monarchy?" I'm not sure yet... and "Why were the pagen Vikings not all that different from other europeans?" Still working on that one too...
Dinner was at a little basement place called Det Lille Apotek (the litle pharmacist), the oldest restaurant in Copenhagen, and we had a pork tenderloin stew with a thick sauce which included pineapple rounds and lots of bacon over rice. Wonderfully delicious and a very traditional dish (Apotekergryden is what the restaurant called it but that's not the traditional name). Pork is huge here, even more so than seafood it seems. Strange, because Denmark is made up of a peninsula and many islands.
At this point most of us were close to passing out but we made one last stop at the Ice Bar. Which is just what it sounds like, a room where the walls, tables, chairs, bar and even the glasses are made with ice from the Torne river in Sweden. In my frozen little glass I had a concoction of Absolut raspberry, raspberry liqueur, raspberry purée, orange juice and champagne. Delish!!!
It was a very long couple of days without a lot of sleep but we made it!