24 hours may not seem much to visit a capital city, however, we have been there before so on this occasion it was just a flying visit and it was a surprise for me, from C.
Despite the slightly late departure of our flight, we arrived into a very wet Copenhagen airport and with no checked baggage, we made our way to the train for the short 10 minute journey into the center.
Outside the main train station is the famous Tivoli theme park, smack bang in the center of the city, unfortunately it was closed, however given the desperate weather we’d have been unable to visit, unless we fancied getting soaked. So, we headed for the Main Street, just a short 5-minute walk to check out some of the stores and no visit to Copenhagen would be complete without a visit to the Lego store 🙂
We also stumbled upon a very large game store, which had everything you could ever want for the gamer/sci-fi/fantasy fan, I was tempted with the Star Wars doormat, but had no way of fitting it into my carry-on bag 😦
Lunch was a lite bite in the always handy Joe and the Juice, as the name suggests, it’s a coffee and juice bar, they also do a few sandwiches. The coffee is fine but the juices are the real winner so after a quick bite we decided to head to our hotel.
Our hotel was about a 25 minute walk, needless to say we got soaked but we got there in plenty of time to dry off and relax for a bit before getting ready to hit the town and my surprise dinner…….
Interestingly this was our first trip away with no cash relying solely on credit and debit cards which turned out the be a breeze.
We grabbed a cab outside the hotel and headed to our first stop, a champagne bar called Balthazar and who does not love a good champagne bar. This place was very swish, large leather seats with high backs, a mock statue of the Winged Victory of Samothrace (well it was hardly original) friendly well groomed staff, the sort of place you could easily drop a few grand on a bottle or two :-).
But we decided to forgo a vintage bottle and settled for a cocktail for C and a glass of grand cru champagne for me, the cocktail was fab as were the bubbles. After soaking up the atmosphere and ordering a 2nd drink, it was time to go for dinner, so we grabbed a cab and headed for a……….bridge?
At this point of course on our way, I still had no idea what C had arranged for dinner, the only thing I’d to go on was, it was “under a bridge”. We arrived at our “bridge” and then C informed me what we were doing for dinner. Turns out, it was a pop-up restaurant, organised by the NOMA staff, yep, “that” NOMA! I was very excited.
On arrival we had a welcome drink before been shown to our seats, which face each other, along with about, 60 other people……yes, it’s a very long table. The idea of sitting opposite one and other is to enjoy the company around you and thankfully, we were sitting around a great bunch of people the conversation was flowing all evening, but on to the most important part, the food!
First up, was a type of taco, with tomatoes, chili, guacamole and cheese, it was amazing. Next, some fantastic sourdough made with Kamoute flour. Next up, an amazing green salad, followed by foraged tacos. Then it was on to shrimp then foraged tacos again, this time with more shrimp – they love their shrimp in Denmark.
The food just kept coming, it was fab, about 12 courses in all. The highlight was the coffee served with s lemon cake, not because it was anything special, but because the lemon cake comes topped with…………..dried ants, yep, you read correct, ants, notice the black specks in the photo, ants! I’d heard about the ants’ thing before so it was interesting to try, they tasted “tangy” which went with the lemon cake. Can’t say we’ll be going out of our way to use them when cooking at home, but it was, interesting to try, if nothing else J.
All in all a fantastic experience, hopefully in the future they’ll do something similar. We left the tent saying goodbye to our new chums and as the night was still young, we decided to go for a drink before heading back to our hotel. As much as we love trying new places, we could not resist going back to Baltazar, which is what we did…….
The following day we had but a few hours before heading to the airport so we enjoyed wandering around the streets of Copenhagen as it was a fantastic day, grabbing the odd coffee as we went.
Despite the short trip, it turned out to be very memorable, all we have to do now it try and get a booking for NOMA J
As always, hope ye enjoyed our little jaunt,
Bye for now,
C&J
cjfoodandtravel 