Return to Scandinavia!

Hot off the heels of our Oslo trip, we spent the weekend in Copenhagen, Denmark with some family.  Erika's grandfather is enjoying a Scandinavian cruise, so we met him, Erika's cousin, Liz, and her boyfriend, Pete, for a weekend of fun in the sun rain.  Actually, there wasn't a lot of rain.  In fact, it mostly only rained when we were on the roofless boat cruise...   

Copenhagen is, of course, most famous for its hotdogs.  Well, not really, but to hear Rob tell it you'd think that all there was to do in the city was wander from hotdog stand to hotdog stand, gorging yourself on the delicious mystery meat- and, to be fair, he's partly right.  In addition to the great food, Copenhagen is the seat of the oldest monarchy in Europe, which wouldn't be that interesting either, except that we actually saw the Crown Princess, Mary.  She was eating a hotdog leaving a ceremony honoring the Royal Danish Guards as we were leaving our restaurant and we joined a small crowd watching her enter and then leave via her motorcade.  There is some dispute over whether she was waving to Peter or to Rob.  Also, her husband, Crown Prince Frederik was probably there, too, but who cares about that?

    Royal intrigue aside, we had a wonderful time hanging out with Erika's family.  We walked through Tivoli, the city's old fashioned amusement park.  We had dinner inside the park and caught part of the park's jazz band's show:

The lady on the right is not having fun.  

   The following day, we toured the beautiful National Gallery, home of the largest collection of Rodin statues outside of Paris.  There are hundreds of Danish, French, Roman and Greek works and the museum does a great job contrasting the (mostly white) marble statues with richly colored walls:

   Later, we took the ill-timed but still fun boat cruise around the city harbor, followed by an amazing dinner in a cellar restaurant in what used to be a monastery.  The next day we had brunch with Erika's grandfather and he departed for the coast of Norway.  We spent the rest of the day at various hotdog stands and cafés, watching the insane antics of the recent Danish high school graduates, which include, but are not limited to: driving around the city in giant trucks while drinking beer, blowing whistles, singing songs, clapping, imploring you to honk if you're horny (which, apparently, most Danish drivers are), randomly and spontaneously pouring out from the truck to dance in circles around and then climb on giant statues of varying Danish importance, running through the streets with above mentioned whistles and bullhorns(!), stripping off their clothes and jumping into the canal, singing more songs, and basically just reminding everyone that they are 19 and you are not.  

     The trucks were everywhere in the city and the kids were having an absolute blast.  They would scream/cheer at everyone they passed and almost everyone would holler back.  The trucks have to do with a tradition of traveling to each student's house for a celebratory drink.  Not a bad tradition, huh?  

     It was a very cool trip- the city was great, but more importantly we got to hang out with some family.  Plus, hotdogs.  Look for a few more pictures on Flickr soon!