Travel day! We get up at 6:00 in the morning (ewww) and prepare to leave our fishing village harbourside retreat for the city of Copenhagen. Our flight is at noon, but we need to pack, and drive back to Leknes. It turns out that we’re running ahead of schedule so we take the coastal route back to Leknes. One last beautiful drive through Lofoten.
It’s amazing how much smoother the driving goes than my first attempt on the island. My theory is that the first time you drive on Lofoten you are over stimulated. You’re trying to learn a new car, new roads, new road rules….and on top of that there is the staggeringly beautiful scenery that keeps demanding your attention. It’s just too much and your attention is too fragmented. Now that I got a handle on the car, the roads, and the rules, the strain isn’t as crippling. There are still moments where I have to tear my attention away from the scenery… but I’m coping much better.
Even after gassing up the car we end up getting to the airport a bit too early. We actually have to wait awhile to check-in because this airport doesn’t have separate staff for check-ins, security, and take-offs and landings. One crew kind of does it all. My bags get the most thorough x-ray screening that they ever have. This might be a small one-gate airport, but it’s not slacking on security.
Our flight to Oslo is pretty uneventful. It’s a two hour flight in a turboprop plane. One thing that momentarily confused me in Oslo was having trouble finding our flight to Copenhagen on the departures board. It turns out that the Danes don’t spell Copenhagen the same we that we do. So while I’m looking for something that starts with a ‘C’ our flight is listed under København. The flight from Oslo to Copenhagen is a bit more eventful because Dawn gets a cup of wine dumped in her lap...but I’m sure she’ll cover that.
We reclaim our bags and try to figure out the Copenhagen public transport system. I fail miserably at deciphering it, but Dawn does an admirable job. Judging from the wet people getting onto the metro, it is pouring outside, but by the time we get off it’s not raining. It looks like we just missed the downpour. After a 10 minute walk we find our place in Copenhagen. We’re renting a studio apartment in the shopping district and the place is pretty swank. It’s the most room we’ve had during this trip so far. My first impression of the shopping district is that this is what they keep patterning open-air malls after. It seems large and bustling.
Copenhagen seems to have an active restaurant and bar scene and we have many many options just a short walk from our place. We decide to try Restaurant Puk because it claims to offer traditional Danish food in a historic building. One of the reasons we decided to visit Copenhagen was to take in the new Nordic food scene, so it makes sense to start with traditional fare as a baseline. Puk is hopping and informs us that without a reservation we can’t get in...on a Monday night… but if we come back in 45 minutes they can fit us in. That gives us time to try out Ruby, which is a cocktail bar I had already scoped out. And as it happens, it’s only a short walk from Puk. The entire menu at Ruby looks amazing and our first two cocktails guarantee that we’ll be trying to visit this place again to try out more of their menu. While there we run into a friendly and talkative Norwegian who asks how long we’ve been in town and tells us that we need to visit Norway. We tell him that we just came from Norway and he seems pleased by that. He orders a gin and tonic and asks if Americans put cucumbers and black pepper in their gin in our tonics. As far as I’m concerned, we do now.
Eventually we make our way back to Puk and have a lovely meal. One standout item on the charcuterie plate is pickled vegetables in what seems like honey mustard. I ask about it and get a roaming answer that tries to communicate how they are picked but doesn’t really help because I have no point of reference for the words he’s using. It might deserve further research.
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