June 28-July 12, 2018

A very short five days after I got home from Africa, B and I headed off to spend our anniversary in Copenhagen and then on to Sweden – to check out my homeland. (I would have thought that was a super bad idea to make them so close together but Sweden and Mozambique are in the same time zone so jet lag wasn’t a big issue-and being on multiple airplanes in such a short amount of time – I sort of got over my fear of flying and watched a lot of really bad movies).  We trade off every year planning our anniversary and this was his year.  He knew that the top of my bucket list lately has been to go see Sweden, especially since my 23andMe confirmed I am nearly 40% Swedish.  I let him plan everything..as I am very much the travel agent in this family and it is not an easy job.  I hoped he would have an appreciation for the work that goes into planning trips…..  He decided to stop over in Copenhagen, Denmark on our way in and our way out since that was Lelu’s absolute favorite place to go on her study abroad.  We stayed here two nights – one of which was our anniversary and then one more night coming back through.

My thoughts and memories about Copenhagen, Denmark: The people (deemed the happiest on the planet) really seemed happy.  They ride bikes everywhere and very few wear helmets.  They have better food than Mozambique and Sweden.  We stayed in a “Boutique Hotel” literally right next to the Red Light District, hearing the sales pitch of the sex workers out our window all night long.  I guess there are a few of those districts around town.  Lelu didn’t ever stumble upon them when in town …thank heavens.

Her favorite part of Copenhagen were the pastries.  We tried those too

The food is very interesting – but tasty.  These are mushrooms.Potatoes with a parmesan crust on top.  Also our super friendly happy waitress.  This was caramel french toast with amazing ice cream.This was so cool looking and also tasty…avocado with white almonds on top. The only food photos I took in Sweden was of  the hot chocolate and swedish pancakes.
There is definitely some very cool looking architecture.  This is the same building as above at night.  Nyhavn is where all of the famous authors lived and all of the hundreds of thousands of tourists and young people hang out. Hans Christian Andersson lived here.    It was also graduation weekend and they have a custom to drive around in big open air buses wearing sailors caps, stopping at all of the squares and drunkenly running through the fountains or busting out dances.  They were everywhere!  We couldn’t figure out what the heck was going on, so we asked at the hotel. If you zoom into this bike, you can see that’s it’s a bar on wheels…of course it is…why not combine a lot of alcohol and a table while riding through traffic and partying at the same time. The Danish are very health conscious (except for the alcohol), they don’t even want you to use the elevator. ,Uber is illegal in Denmark and B was still not walking very well so we managed by taking cabs and a bus, walking slowly and  stumbling upon plenty of pretty cool looking buildings in our exploring.   I took this photo for the clouds but the big town square that’s under construction is a big embarrassment for Copenhagen, as they already remodeled the whole area and did something very wrong and had to tear the whole thing up again.  The obvious reason I would snap this photo is for the Soren (son) connection, but I really snapped it for two connections…. including the Soren Kierkegaard connection.  He’s danish and one of my very favorite philosophers.  I doubt this is named for him or us but it caught my eyeI always have some woulda/coulda/shoulda regrets after every trip and if I had known there was a bridge that connects Copenhagen to the southern tip of Sweden, near Malmo (where our ancestors are from), I would have rather rented a car and drove our way up to Sweden. We didn’t make it that far south on this trip. On to my homeland..