Coffee – Page 7 – It's all about the coffee

Copenhagen with Bike Mike

First thing today was a bike Tour of Copenhagen with Bike Mike. I found this tour with a bit of googling and it has a very high rating. After completing the tour I can confirm the rating is well deserved. Not sure about the Max 15 guest per tour he mentions on his web page though, this was the biggest bike tour I’ve ever done, I’d say there were at least 20 of us. You can see by this photo of the bikes it was massive.

Regardless of the number, he managed it quite well and no one got lost, run over or caused an accident. It was the bike tour standard, meet at the tour company, have the bike explained, any idiosyncratic road rules or customs explained, fitted with a bike and a small test run. Interestingly with Copenhagen the interesting idiosyncrasies are that cars and pedestrians are not going to be an issue, cars will steer well clear and go around you or wait, but other cyclists will be less forgiving of mistakes. Although helmets are not compulsory in Denmark, I’m used to wearing them at home, they were offered and since I’m riding on the wrong side of the road probably a good idea.

First stop was Israels Plads This is where I had lunch and coffee. According to Mike some of the best food in Copenhagen. Israel donated a sculpture here to commemorate that Denmark saved the majority of their Jewish population during the war by evacuating them to Sweden.

We were told about Denmarks famous open sandwiches, so I made sure I had one for lunch. We cycled through a low income, migrant ghetto (they actually legally call them ghettos here if a certain portion of the population are not of Danish extraction and are below a certain income level or dependent on social security). Then though a cemetery where Hans Christian Andersen is buried. Interestingly the Danes use these old cemeteries as parks and its not unusual to see people having picnics or drinks here on the grass.

And word for the day “Eye-Poo”. Its what Danes call ugly buildings. Mostly brutalist 1950/60s buildings that Mike mentioned were put up when Denmark had no money. Now thats its a richer country with buildings are much nicer. Here is an example of the specific building that was mentioned as an Eye-Poo

We also visited the old Naval houses that were built 400 years ago to house sailors. Now that are multi-million dollar properties. Insides can be changed but outside is considered grade listed

We also visited Churchill Park to commemorate the British led liberation of Denmark in World War 2, The Palace where the Royal Family (including Princess Mary) live, City Beach (where old industrial docks have been turned into public swimming places with deck chairs an bars etc. Parliament, The Royal Stables, the Nyhavns District and a few others. Very nice looking town. The “108 Restaurant” we went past is a sister restaurant of Noma (highest ranked restaurant on the planet), and 108 is easier to get into. No visit to Copenhagen would be complete without going past the Little Mermaid. When they say little, they are *not* kidding. Its as crappily small as our Dog on the Tucker Box.

A note on Copenhagen bike lines. Most are raised off the street, but below the footpath/sidewalk. This keeps the bikes completely isolated from traffic and pedestrians. They are not all like this, but a lot are. You have to be careful not to walk on them, as cyclists will run you down.

We also road on some “Green Wave” bike lines. These are where the lights are timed so that if you are travelling at 20kph and go through a green light, all future lights on the green wave cycle path will be green, they are timed so you get a completely smooth run into the city. Its no wonder 2/3rd of the city cycle at least once per day.

I’ll update this soon with a video from the tour. (see below)

Travel

Hello Copenhagen

The SAS flight was one of the most relaxed stress free plane boardings I’ve ever had. Probably due to the plane being only half full and one of the last flights out of Heathrow for the night. They called business class then SAS go, and a few of us are waiting around for economy to be called, it wasn’t so we just wandered up anyway, turns out SAS go is economy. Was pretty impressed with SAS. Similar to the BA euro flyer (ie cheap, but not Ryanair type cheap). Seats were reclining, USB power, and inflight wifi. Stuff BA didn’t have. So far better than my flight to Poland.

Didn’t bother with Wifi as it was only an hour and gave me a chance to catchup on all things Copenhagen from the awesome little book Sharon and Emma gave me for my birthday. It’s put me in the direction for a coffee or two over the next few days. I’ve also worked out how to signup for Copenhagen’s bike share. Will be interesting to compare it to Paris.

Was a very clear night flight awesome watching the sunset out the other window. I prefer isle seats, so I wasn’t at the window to take a photo however the kind fellow opposite me took one for me. The flight was only 1.5 hrs and even though it was delayed it seemed to go super quick

After landing found the train and got a ticket

Got on a train and you can see the place is already set up for cycling

The phone network welcomed me to Denmark

Found my hotel. The central station wasn’t as clean and spartan as the one at the airport. The trip took about 25 minutes. Would seem central stations truly are the same the world over

Room seems fine

Denmark is supposed to be the happiest country on earth. Even the power outlets look happy !

They even have a model little mermaid at the airport

Travel

Leaving London

I’m leaving London yet again this holiday, third time in as many weeks I’ve departed this wonderful city once for Poland, once for France and now for Denmark. It’s a very weird feeling as Sharon and Emma are heading back to Sydney whilst I continue on. Emotionally it’s holidays ending, holidays starting and saying goodby to the family for two weeks all rolled into one.

We were in bed pretty early last night from the final day in Paris and transfer to London. Our day technically started again at about 20 past 12 in the AM when the fire alarm in our room went off for a few seconds. In my dazed half slumber I thought it was one of the multitude of electronic gadgets I have going off but then realised it was the alarm. It stopped then 5 minutes later came on again and didn’t stop. Looked in the corridor to see lots of people heading out, but couldn’t see or smell any smoke and looking out the window everything seemed fine. Before exiting into the cool night half naked I called reception who confirmed that another guest got busted smoking in their room. I could tell from his tone he was super pissed about it. For him it turned a quiet nightshift into a nightmare.

Once we were up and out (at a more reasonable 10am) we jumped on the tube to head to the Science Museum. Totally wow wow wow. For me this was complete nerd heaven. Not sure why I never visited it on my last trip, but on my next one I’m spending a full day in there.

Before entering we grabbed a quick bite at a mini Pret store, and the coffee was a surprisingly good one, better than I expected. Maybe it was just I’d gotten used to all the crap coffee in Paris.

Whilst we are on the subject of Paris, as much as I love Paris, as a city to visit London wins hands down. Paris may be the city of light, but as the saying goes when you are tired of London you are tired of life and I’m by no means tired of London. And as it’s only 2hrs by train you can hop over for the weekend.

They have James Watt’s workshop here in the museum.

They have stacks of cool stuff on display. Remember I saw someone riding a chopper bicycle in London about 2 weeks ago?

They even have the first computer I ever owned displayed (VIC20). Now I do feel old. They had all the greats from the 80s here

John will recognise this blast from the past :-

One fantastic thing about London is all the free museums. We spent a few hours here at the Science museum and it cost nothing (I donated the recommended £5, but it’s by no means compulsory). Could could spend a week visiting all the museums here and not spend a cent (or a penny) and London has some fabulous museums.

I couldn’t resist this t-shirt

After the science museum we headed over to the Guildhall to look at the underground Roman amphitheater they discovered, and again entry was completely free. Our day only cost us breakfast, lunch and a few tube rides.

Lunch was a few sandwiches and salads we bought at Tesco and at in the shade on the grounds of the Guildhall.

After checking this out, we tubed it back to the hotel, picked up our luggage and took the Heathrow express out to the airport. Sharon and Emma were departing from terminal 3 and I terminal 2. After helping Sharon and Emma checking in and saying our goodbyes I headed to terminal 2. I was through checkin and security in record time of about 5 minutes to discover my flight is delayed about an hour. C’est la vie…. at least it’s giving me time a plenty to write this blog post.

One positive about Terminal 2 is I found a place that does decent coffee. About a 7/10. Not bad for an airport

I’m now at the gate waiting for my flight to start boarding after a bit of a delay. Next post will be from Denmark. Home of Hygge and LEGO !

Travel

Au Revoir Charlie

Today is a relocation day. We are leaving Paris and heading back to London for a night so Sharon and Emma can get their flight back to Sydney tomorrow night, and I can get my flight to Copenhagen.

We had mostly packed yesterday afternoon so we would be ready early. We had to checkout by 11 and our train wasn’t till 3 so we had a few hours to look around. We used stasher.com to find somewhere near Gare Du Nord to keep our luggage for a few hours whilst we looked around. I’d been super stressed about our ability to get across Paris on Bastille Day, but need not of worried as the traffic was less than normal. Apparently it doesn’t get crazy until sun down. It will also be insanely crazy on Sunday with France in the final for the World Cup. I expected to see tri-colours everywhere but it seemed quite subdued and really just felt like a normal Saturday morning.

Gare Du Nord was its usual eclectic mix of grimy streets, strange smells, throngs of people, back packers, dodgy characters, beggars and shite souvenir peddlers. One dodgy looking bloke was just hanging around the subway entrance looking to push past someone and get through on their subway ticket for free. I’d seen a few people do that over the past week and could spot their MO getting close to people and trying to follow them through. I blocked him from trying this as Emma went through.

As soon as we had dumped the luggage we got a train back to Gare Saint Lazare to check out the Primtemps Haussmann department store. The less time I spend at Gare du Nord the happier I’ll be.

This department store (Primtemps Haussmann) is wonderful. The true Parisian shopping experience and prices to match. They have a roof garden with a great view but unfortunately it’s closed today. We settled on coffee and a cake. Again sigh….. this was a commercial Nespresso machine. Ok and consistent as Nespresso always is, but not worth €5 a pop.

This store also has a pretty spectacular food and grocery area which we wandered and oogled all the nice looking food products for a bit. For lunch we grabbed some packaged sandwiches from the local carrefor supermarket to take on the train and avoid paying Eurostar prices for substandard food, and also to avoid joining the expected far-queue at the restaurant car on the train.

Cookie kit in a glass jar!

Not sure I’d want to explain “happy plants” to the guys at customs in Sydney.

View from the cafe

Inside Gare Du Nord looking down from the Eurostar check in area.

We started the check in process just before 2pm. Took a while to get though but thankfully not as bad as the trip to Paris. For some reason our seats were reassigned and we lost the table seat we had and were across from each other on the train. Eurostar experience overall is down on my expectations given the great trips I had last year and in 2016.

Bastille Day M&M’s for sale today

Just in time for the World Cup….

I picked up my copy of Charlie Hebdo from the station to browse through on the train back to London. I do wish they would do an English version, oh well some entertainment for the next few days over coffee with google translate to fully appreciate it

Train arrived in London on time but they screwed a few people around by not stopping at one of the designated stops (Ashford) and had to organise other transport for them. London has it all over Paris as far as arrivals go, St Pancras is clean and well maintained. We took the tube from St Pancras (Kings Cross technically as that’s the tube station attached to St Pancras international) to Paddington where we have a hotel so we don’t have to relocate across London in the afternoon tomorrow to get to Heathrow. Just jump on the Heathrow express.

Our hotel in London is right on the “CS3” cycle super highway where it’s mostly separated from traffic and crosses London. I wish Sydney could do something like this.

Our room has a mezzanine level

Travel

Café Procope and a Cruise

On Friday night, our last night in Paris, we had dinner at Café Procope which first opened as a coffee house in 1686. It’s billed as the oldest continually running restaurant in Paris. It has lots of historical items on display, including one of Napoleon’s famous hats which he left once as guarantee of future payment for a meal he had there. They are obviously still waiting.

Most walking and cycle tours will go past here as the street is on is equally famous as it’s where the guillotine was first tested on sheep. There used to be steel markers in the road where it stood but they have been removed with recent road work.

Voltaire, Franklin & Jefferson all drank at the Cafe here and some of the first drafts of the US Declaration of Independence were written here. As well as Napoleon’s hat they also have Voltaire’s desk.

I was thus keen to have dinner there to try it out and take in some of the historical ambience. It’s more expensive than the other restaurants around it. The food was nice but not as amazing as some of the other dishes we have had elsewhere and overall I was a little disappointed in the experience, perhaps I’d overhyped how good it would be. Service was certainly on the galacially slow side.

After dinner we grabbed a uber over to the Eiffel Tower to get on a night tour of the Seine. The tour lasts about an hour and to make the most of the night cruise we aimed for the 10.30pm boat to see Paris all light up. This was a fantastic cruise, well worth the €13 tickets. They take the boat under 22 bridges where everyone makes as much noise as possible when passing under. This got annoying very quickly. Once the cruise was over we took the Metro back to the apartment. It was quite a long day, didn’t get back till close to 1am.