Copenhagen

Since we aren't moving to Copenhagen after all, Hannah and I decided to join Joe on a business trip to check out the city. Joe flew up early Thursday morning to work and we joined him later that day. That night, we joined our friends Tim and Cortney out for dinner (other Americans that moved from A'dam to CPH with Biogen).

Friday, Joe left for work and left me to transfer hotels (as there was some convention in town and we couldn't stay 2 nights at the same hotel) and find my way about town. Luckily, Cortney gave me a great map and as luck would have it, our new hotel was a 5 minute walk to the main shopping street of Stroget. Hannah and I passed the day away window shopping and checking out the sights along the way, including Tivoli, the oldest amusement park. We stopped at an outdoor cafe for lunch, as the weather was beautiful, and I ordered a hamburger and small beer for lunch. Equivalent to about $25...oops, guess I should have paid more attention to the conversion but when the Kroner to Euro is 7.5 to 1, that's just too much math, especially when I'm hungry.

We eventually made our way back to the hotel and rested a bit before taking another walk to Nyhavn, a picturesque "Amsterdamish" canal a few blocks from our hotel. It was beautiful. We met Joe back at the hotel at about 615p and headed out for a drink on Nyhavn and dinner eventually. It took us a while to find a restaurant as many were busy and 1 even saw Hannah and said "no" which turned out to be very wise on their part as she was quite a handful that night. Must of had something to do with the short siestas in her stroller and no real nap. We finally settled at the Viking House Pub and Restaurant. The food was really good, well...I ordered fried pork (what was I thinking?) that turned out to be basically fried pork fat....again, what was I thinking? Luckily I have a wonderful husband who switched dinners with me and so I had his stew instead. And he said he liked the fried pork, but really??? We also turned out to be "those" people. Hannah was very cranky. In trying to play with her, oops, we spilled a beer...all over Hannah and my jacket. And while the waitress was cleaning up the beer, she spilled cheerios all over the floor (Joe picked those up). Then, more whining. Eventually, a man at the bar (let me specify, old, possibly drunk Irish man who I doubt ever had children) gave us parenting advice. Apparently, the young lass just needed an apple tart (apple turnover) which he proceeded to give her. What were we suppposed to do? We smiled, said thank you and watched our daughter eat a ton of sugar at 830. Will she ever go to bed? We walked home after dinner and yes, she did go to bed, covered in apple tart stickiness.

Saturday, we walked to the Little Mermaid statue and past one of the castles and then took a drive into the countryside to Frederiksvaerk, where we had coffee and cake at Ron's house (another of Joe's colleagues who recently moved to Denmark). The countryside was beautiful. Before our flight, we had just enough time to stop in Hillerod (where Biogen is located) to see the Hillerod Castle, the Danish equilavent to Versailles.

And of course we had to get in some play time at the Copenhagen airport before boarding our flight home, which we won't go into as Joe and I are both trying to block it from our minds as we prepare for our 11 hr flight to LAX this coming Saturday....
And now poor Joe flew to Boston today for a few days....No rest for the weary.