Wonderful Copenhagen

Who'd have thought it! Copenhagen in late September and we're sweltering in our autumn clothing! This is the first of three cities on our Nordic tour to promote Olivado and avocado oil in Scandinavia. So Thursday and Friday were all meetings and acquainting ourselves with this very stylish city, and the weekend was for being tourists, beginning with an extraordinary dinner at a restaurant near our old hotel, and recommended in the weekly newspaper. We were lucky to get a reservation at Saa Hvidt, as our host Frederik explained when we arrived. There was a private party happening in the restaurant upstairs, but a Japanese food writer had booked a table downstairs, and we were to join them there in the small space near the kitchen. An American food photographer was also wandering around capturing Frederik and his colleagues at work producing their very special Danish cuisine - all totally fresh, local and seasonal, a set 5-course menu with accompanying wines. It was magnificent, a procession that began with smoked mackerel, through slow-steamed cod, vegetables in pear sauce, pork tenderloin with sweet beetroot and wild chervil, to a slow-baked apple reminiscent of tarte tatin with blackberries. Heaven! We rolled home to our hotel.
We'd moved to a new hotel on Friday afternoon, this one on an old barge moored at Christianshavn - quieter, I thought, than the inner city hotel we'd been in. Mistake! I hadn't noticed that we were moored about 100m from the busiest bridge in Copenhagen. Which was fine for me, as my dodgy inner ear likes that constant hum, but my sensitive-eared Gary suffered.
Saturday dawned warm and sunny, so we did the Danish thing - hired bikes for the day. I found a bicycle hire place called Baisikeli, a name which intrigued me (the Swahili word for bicycle), as did their operating principle (proceeds go to their workshop in Tanzania, where old Danish bicycles are recycled and sold or given to needy Africans). So we strolled across the city to Baisikeli, where we swapped African experience stories with the owner and eventually rode off on our lovely big upright Danish baisikelis.
First priority was breakfast, not always easy to find on the weekend in Copenhagen, where a vast brunch is the order of the day, and foreigners wanting just fruit and muesli are not welcome. But we found just that, and a great coffee, and fortified, set off again to explore. A fortuitous mis-turn took us to Vestamager, a nature reserve east of Copenhagen, with a myriad trails through the moors and woods. We were looking for Dragor, and some cruising hours later we found the delightful little village, south of the airport, its narrow lanes drawing us past yellow-painted thatch-roofed houses to the harbour, where we joined the locals at a seaside cafe, tucking into huge plates of fish and chips washed down by a Danish beer.
Finding our way home again was easier thanks to the wonderful Danish propensity for cycle tracks everywhere - even alongside the airport. We cycled under incoming and outgoing wingtips to the Amager Strand, a new beach development with sandy beaches and large wooden structures providing protection from the elements. On this last weekend of the summer it was a busy place, abuzz with cyclists and pedestrians and even the occasional hardy swimmer. Back across towards Christianshavn we cycled through the immaculately hedged alleys of Klondermarken, protecting the tiny painted wooden summer cottages lining the canals, and on into Christiana, the so-called  "free city", hazy with cannabis smoke on this sunny Saturday afternoon.
We returned to Christiania for dinner, to another restaurant recommended in our newspaper. Spiseloppen was harder to find, but also well worth the effort. Directed there eventually by a Christiania local, we climbed two flights of graffiti-lined stairs to a long crowded space at the top of an old warehouse, and enjoyed a different but delicious dining experience.