Day 24-2. Copenhagen; sightseeing.
One thing was definite; we like design museums and being in the design capital of a country renowned for innovative design we decided there must be something worth seeing. Unfortunately not all the museums were open when we were there so we decided to have a look round the centre and try being proper tourists. Freed of our bikes and luggage we finally got ourselves going and headed out into the sunny blustery day doging the showers as they came and went. As with Bergen a couple of years earlier we managed to find a cafe named after Damae's father before our interests turned to lunch.
Not far from Oscar's we bumped into a restaurant offering a Mediterranean lunch buffet for a good price. This enticed us to sit at one of the tables on the street outside, which was fortunately sheltered from the worst of the wind. The deal was the witresses would bring us drinks but we had to serve ourselves from the buffet. Logical enough. Inside down a few steps we were presented with a bewildering array of yummy looking dishes including enough to keep us as vegetarians happy. The food turned out to be very good indeed, and finishing off with a coffee we headed out into the shopping centre of Copenhagen looking for something interesting.
We wandered around and found an area rather like the tourist hot spot in Amsterdam close to the Dam. In fact the streets looked so similar and the atmosphere was almost identical that it was as if we were in the Netherlands again. The day was turning out a bit vague, but neither of us was in the mood to take photos. Damae did carry on her theme of photos of windows started in Fredrikstad in 2005.
It was time for a coffee and finding ourselves back here we decided that this sunny spot would be great for a coffee. Having been quite interested in some design features on Danish bikes I took a photo of this one standing a few metres away from our table. I'd seen quite a few of them and the frame was interesting as it had one leg less than you'd expect. The coffee, when it finally arrived, turned out to be the most expensive Cafe Latte we had ever had, at more than five euros a pop. To our surprise it was not the best coffee we had ever had although it was quite good. Still it was nice to watch the world go by and the sun held out long enough for us to finish our drinks and use the facilities before heading out into the next shower.
Across the square from the cafe was the day's highlight. The Illums Bolighus design department store in an old stone building was four floors of neat ideas and amusing things to fill your house with. Unlike a design museum you could also buy everything you could see, and play with lots of things. We started on the ground floor before slowly working our way to the top, and ended up spending two hours looking around and being delighted.
A few things caught our eye; this spice rack was a good solution to the perennial problem of how to organise all of those small pots of herbs so that they are all easy to get to. It consisted of a steel plate mounted to the wall and a set of pots with transparent lids and magnets on the bottom. We nearly bought one of these sets but for the price. At around Eur150 it seemed just a little too expensive, although it did meet the 'William Morris' requirement. There was also a range of lamps made out of silvered plastic sheet which rotated gently under the influence of the heat of the bulbs and air currents in the shop.