Category: Europe and Africa Spring 2023

Copenhagen

We are in Copenhagen on our from London to Morocco. If you are wondering why we are taking this circuitous route, it is because we have a lot of Norwegian Airlines credits. When the pandemic shut things down Duke and I were Spain with reservations to fly home from Rome on Norwegian Airlines. Obviously we didn’t use those reservations. We received Norwegian Airlines credits for the canceled flights, and now we are using them. We arrived in Copenhagen at 10:20 pm last night and are planning to leave for Marrakesh, Morocco at 6:20 am tomorrow morning. We are staying at the Clarian hotel at the airport . That’s really nice because we can walk to the airport gates and also to the Copenhagen metro system directly from the hotel.

The view from our hotel.
Duke on the metro with our hotel in the background.

Early this afternoon we caught the metro into central Copenhagen. We had a wonderful meal at a coffee shop near our metro stop. We shared an order of mussels and fries and a plate of local fish. Both were excellent.

Mussels, fries, fish and salad

Then we wandered around central Copenhagen enjoying the sites.

Orstedrsparken City Park
Copenhagen City Hall

I even found a wonderful yarn shop to browse in.

Yarn shop
Yarn shop
Duke studying a sweater he might make for me when he learns to knit

On our way back to the hotel we stopped at a grocery store and bought wine cheese and bread for dinner.

Bread and cheese for dinner
Sunset from our room

This evening I finished editing our first YouTube video of the trip. You can see it here.

London to Copenhagen

Our flight from London Gatwick to Copenhagen left at 7:30 pm. So we checked out of our hotel at noon and stored our bags at the hotel. Then we walked to the British Library.

They have an amazing collection of books and documents. Everything from a Gutenberg Bible to a Shakespeare first folio to John Lennon’s lyrics for Hard Days Night written on the back of a birthday card. Not to mention they have the Magna Carta! And it’s a beautiful building.

Illuminated Bible
Shakespeare First Folio
John Lennon lyrics for Hard Days Night
Inside the British Library

The Football cup finals were at Wembley Stadium today. It was Newcastle United against Manchester United. Everywhere we went we saw Newcastle fans. I guess Manchester fans celebrate in another part of London. Most of the pubs were packed inside and out.

Newcastle fans. Notice the sign says no Manchester colours allowed!

We went back to the pub we ate at the first night. They had rugby on and weren’t going to be showing the football because they didn’t have Sky TV. We had a Camembert and prosciutto sandwich and sea bass chowder before heading back to our hotel.

Late lunch / early dinner

We went back to the hotel, collected our bags and took a taxi to the station where we caught a train to Gatwick airport.

Our electric taxi. It even had a card reader in back for paying.
On the train to Gatwick

We arrived in Copenhagen at about 10 pm. We are staying at the Clarian Hotel at the airport. It was great to just walk straight from our plane to our hotel.

London – Day 3

After a late night last night, we took it easy this morning. Around noon we left the hotel and headed to the National Gallery. Along the way we walked down Denmark Street which is the setting for the Cormoran Strike books, one of my favorite series.

Denmark Street

The National Gallery has a wonderful collection.

In the National Gallery
Monet
Van Gogh

Outside the museum, in Trafalgar Square, there were pro Ukrainian and pro Russian demonstration going on. Duke voiced his opinion.

Pro Ukrainian
Pro Russian

From the National gallery we walked down Whitehall towards parliament while listening to the Rick Steves Westminster audio tour

Boadicea

We had a tour of the Houses of Parliament scheduled for 3:30. It was a 90 minute tour and it was wonderful. We saw both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The guide walked us through a history of how democracy developed in the UK, how it all works and where things happen. We were not allowed to take pictures most place inside the building. But picture taking was allowed inside Westminster Hall where the Queen laid in state and where speeches from visiting heads of state are given.

Houses of Parliament and Big Ben
Westminster hall.

The walk back to our hotel was cold. So it was nice to listen to jazz in the bar, eat in the hotel restaurant, and not have to bundle up and go out again.

London – Day 2

The British Museum is stunning and overwhelming. It’s impossible to see everything but we did explore and see a lot today.

Duke in the Enlightenment Gallery
Me with one of the human headed winged lions that guarded an Assyrian Palace from 4800 b.c.

The museum has displays of several hoards, or collections of treasures, buried for safekeeping and forgotten. I have always loved the idea of how exciting it must be to discover a hoard.

This hoard of late Roman silver tableware from the 4th century was found in 1941 or 1942
This enormous Viking silver hoard was buried between 905 and 910 a.d. the hoard weighed about 40kg.
This Iron Age gold Roman jewelry is part of the Winchester Hoard. It was found by a metal detectorist scattered in a plowed field in 2000.

For dinner we went to a restaurant my sister, Betsy recommended. Rules is supposed to be the oldest restaurant in London. We shared the roast rib of beef for two with Yorkshire pudding. For desert we had an English classic, sticky toffee pudding. We could only get a reservation for 10pm. So by the time we walked the .9 miles back to our hotel, it was after midnight. Given how full I am, the walk in the cold was a good thing!

Roast rib of beef and Yorkshire pudding
Duke and I eating dinner at Rules
Sticky toffee pudding
Me at Rules
Rules Restaurant

London – Day 1

I’ve visited London several times over the years. In fact I graduated from an American High School in London, London Central High School. But, before today I had never been to Greenwich.

This morning we had a chilly but enjoyable walk from our hotel near the British Museum to the boat docks on the Thames by Westminster.

Duke in Trafalgar Square
People at the end of Downing Street
Tower Bridge from our boat.

We took a Thames tourist boat down to Greenwich.

The Cutty Sark in Greenwich.

We briefly visited the Maritime Museum

Me in front of the maritime museum.
A display about the Spanish Armada

Then we toured St Alfege Church. We learned lots of interesting tidbits. Alfege was Archbishop of Canterbury. He was killed by marauding Danes who were camped in Greenwich in 1012. The church was built where he was killed. It is believed that Henry VIII was baptized there. During the Blitz in 1941 over 1000 bombs and incendiary devices were dropped on Greenwich. Two of them went through the roof and badly damaged the church.

St Alfege Church
The inside of the church.

We also get to visit the crypt. When the bombs hit the church there were more than 100 people sheltering in the crypt. It was so strong that no one was hurt.

Inside the crypt
Duke coming out of the crypt.

We took the bus back from Greenwich. The 188 bus route ended right around the corner from our hotel.

For dinner we went to a nearby pub, The Swan. We had fish and chips and steak and ale pie. It was so much fun to be in a London pub!! I especially liked the mushy peas and mint..

Duke ordering
Fish and chips and steak and ale pie.