Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen (Gothenburg, Sweden to Copenhagen, Denmark)

The excitement of Gothenburg became too much for one post, dear reader, so here we are. And yes, we do get to Copenhagen and today's title. I know, an early reveal. Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen by Danny Kaye from the 1952 musical Hans Christian Andersen. It's time to a rekindle memory or just to be appalled by the music of the '50s. Your call, but listen here. Given the trend to 'revive' musicals I am mystified as to why this one hasn't hit the stage again.

Flowers are beginning to emerge.

Day 3

Monday (time is fluid). The systembolaget would be open today. Super excitement. On the way to find food to start the day Jayne reported our room hadn't been serviced. The response was underwhelming and the woman at the desk began making excuses. "Maybe you sent them away." No. "Maybe you had 'do not disturb' on the door." No. "I'll have it attended to immediately." she said as we left for breakfast in Haga. 

In case you don't know there is a sign: HAGA.

We had deliberately delayed our arrival at Haga to ensure there were more stores open. In reality it is one long street of timber fronted stores. It is like Berry in NSW stretched along one street with little car traffic. There are a number of antique stores, cafés, clothing, souvenir and quirky gift shops.

The Skansen Kronan. Not a great photo.

We selected a different café for breakfast. In an unexpected move that Jayne said would only disappoint, I swapped my double espresso for a double shot Americano. She was right. It was a disappointment. But the pastry that accompanied it was spot on.

Fish Church

Following breakfast, we walked down towards the river and the fish market which has been dubbed the fish church because of the building's resemblance to a church. It has been undergoing renovation and was due to open in 2023, according to the official Gothenburg tourist booklet. As you can see from the photo, like SJ trains, they are running behind schedule.

Pray to the seafood.

The walk along the waterfront was not as scenic as we had hoped and we deviated back along the canal, towards the hotel and what I thought was a church. It had a clock in the steeple we noted from a distance. Clearly not a church. As we got closer we could see crosses on the lower roof line. A church with a clock in the main steeple. That's something we've never seen before.

Christchurch, Gothenburg.

Back to the hotel to change bags and grab the backpack, to find our room was still unclean. Hmmm. It was still early.

Lunch

Wine supply secured, we returned to the market hall in search of Swedish meatballs. The food in the market looked amazing, but the restaurants mostly had bar type tables. Not what we were looking for. The problem we realised, once outside, was that if the restaurant did not feature an English menu we had no idea what Swedish meatballs were called in Swedish. Thankfully Google translator did: Kötbullar.

Fortunately the restaurant across the road served Kötbullar so in we went. The staff were lovely and produced an English menu for us. The starter was free as was the bread, salad, biscuits and brewed coffee. We were amused by one of the wines on offer, a shiraz from Australia called Don't tell Gary. It's McPhersons wines in Victoria. No we didn't drink it; we opted for an Italian red to go with our Swedish meatballs.

Yeah, I had to Google it. It's a sculpture of a girl in a green dress riding a mythical animal.

Everything was going well until ... I placed my knife on the side of my plate and was reaching for my phone when the knife slipped. Not wanting it to fall on the floor, I pushed on it with my free hand. It stopped the slide to the ground, but in doing so, created a force that transferred up the handle to the blade. The blade was covered in thick, luscious, dark gravy. I may as well have picked up a spoon full of gravy and flicked it over myself. And over my shoulder. Fortunately, or unfortunately for the comic aspect of this catastrophe, there was no one sitting behind me. Gravy, spotted from right shoulder to cuff and one lone heart shot. Cruel. And on a clean shirt.

The Final Afternoon

Despite the desecration of my shirt, we went to the shopping mall to purchase a few requisites for tomorrow's travel. We opted for Lidl, another discount German chain similar to Aldi. It's a cheap option but I'm still  not sure about some of the product we purchased.

As we were leaving, the drizzle re-commenced so we went straight back to the hotel. Would our room finally have made the service list? I mean we were promised immediate action this morning and that hadn't happened on our pre-lunch visit.

A children's play area in Haga. We'll discuss later.

We opened the door to find ... the room exactly as we had left it. So, we dropped our bags, grabbed the computer and went to reception. This time we spoke with the concierge. Before he knew our room number, he said someone had been sent to clean it after we complained that morning. I don't think so. Then he asked for our room number so he could send someone there immediately.

The robot was cleaning the hallways - maybe we should have sent it to our room.

We adjourned to the bar and blogged. No drinks. they didn't deserve our money. After an hour, we went to the room to find it had been cursorily cleaned. The bed looked like it had been made by a teenager. The floor hadn't been vacuumed but we had clean glasses (we hope).

That night we switched on the TV and came across an English program called Shetland. Two episodes in. We're addicted.  It's like the Australian show Dead Loch without the humour. I'll be chasing that when we get home.

Leaving Gothenburg

At check out the next day, the woman on reception did the usual, "How was your stay?" So, Jayne told her. The result of the non-housekeeping was she removed the charge for the bottle of wine we had one evening. Cool. Still won't be going back to Radisson Blu anytime soon.

Across the cobbled pavers into the station. Bags stowed. Seats facing the direction of travel. The train left on time. Everything was looking good. Our connecting train that we were picking up at Malmö was 20 minutes late leaving Stockholm, but by the time it reached Malmö it was only 5 minutes behind schedule.

Copenhagen or København

We arrived close enough to the scheduled time. The difficulty was, as always, getting form the station to the accommodation. It was supposed to be a 30 minute walk. The part walk/part train journey was still a 750m walk and involved navigating a train system of which we had absolutely no knowledge.

It was a nice day. The sun was shining, something we hadn't seen for a while. We decided to trust Declan and typed the address into the phone. I must say, we were a little bit disappointed that Mary hadn't sent someone to meet us at the station, given we are almost family, (we've been to Tasmania and we have also walked past the Slipp Inn at Darling Harbour, as opposed to the Ship Inn at the Quay).

Anyway after dragging the bags about 400 metres we decided we were headed in the wrong direction and returned to our point of origin and started over. What followed was a fun filled 30 minutes or so of dragging our bags across Denmark's quaintly paved footpaths. They are all partly solid, the other section is cobbled. Not really designed for wheelie bags, but so cool for tourists.

As a result of Declan's penchant for zigzagging through streets, we saw much of the Latin quarter before we reached our accommodation. It was Tuesday afternoon but the streets were very crowded. Jayne was navigating so the fact we walked past the Pandora shop was, I'm absolutely certain, coincidental.

And then ...

Accommodation discovered. Eventually. It's never as easy as it is supposed to be. Sadly it was on the second floor, up three flights of stairs. Equally sadly, there were four different digital locks to negotiate before we could get in. That's more security than we have at home. There was, of course, a trick to mastering the digital locks but we got there, thankfully still in daylight.

The apartment is everything we need and is extremely well situated. Bags unpacked, we went in search of a supermarket and some wine. As it turned out, they were one and the same since Denmark, for some reason, has not subscribed to the rest of Scandinavia's prohibitive approach to the sale of alcohol. Our shopping done, we turned our attention to dinner. Given how well located we are, how difficult could that be?

This is our place. Well, the entry.

Not so simple if you don't know where things are. We wandered for a while and stumbled across the Pandora store again.  Time was on our side. In we went, Danish charm, a crown in honour of our Mary, Queen of Denmark purchased, dinner then moved to top priority.

It was no easy task, dear reader, but you have suffered enough for one blog so I shall end this forthwith. We found a tiny Italian restaurant in a cellar. Great food and wine and, as we settled in for our meal, the people kept coming and coming. Some were turned away. Others were more defiant and stood and waited in the tiny area near the entry stairs.

We didn't linger over dinner and relinquished our table to those so desperate as to stand and wait.

Until next time.