(Translation: Happy New Year!)

I hope everyone had a lovely New Year! Whether you were celebrating, dancing, babysitting, or marveling the fireworks, the most important thing is that we got to celebrate about nine hours before most of you. 😛

New Year’s Eve was a longgg day for us. Jonathan and I woke up around 4:30, and my mom woke up around 6. Of course, that didn’t help us get out the door before noon, but what are you gonna do?

I sent my mom and Jonathan to the grocery store at some point to get us body wash and breakfast, and they came back far too quickly, my mom giggling up a storm because they hadn’t actually managed to find the grocery store. I’m pretty sure they went the exact opposite direction from which they should have headed, and they found themselves in a little grocery kiosk called Circle K. They decided that was good enough, so they grabbed some snacks, forgot the body wash, and headed back.

Next, my mom tried venturing to the Lagkagehuset across the street, my favorite bakery in Denmark. She came back a few minutes later, flustered and frantic because the Danish was just too much to handle! I had to go back in with her and sort everything out (in English, because everybody actually does speak English here.) The baked goods were worth it, though, and I got my signature stor chokolade boller for free because they only had one tiny one left. Huzzah!

Then on to Copenhagen. We wandered my favorite store on the entire planet, Tiger, and then perused the shopping streets of downtown. Everything was alive and bright, and it was hard to resist the sales.

Street performers were braving the cold just as we were, and they were pretty talented, too!

We took our time crossing the canals to Christiansborg Slot (Castle).

The tower in the castle was closed because of the holiday, but my favorite part of Christiansborg is the view of the royal stables, anyway!

We took advantage of the pretty Copenhagen Orange buildings…

And mom posed with this creepy statue.

On our way to the Black Diamond library, we found a sidewalk trampoline (my favorite!) and messed around for a while!

Never too old to take advantage of an unoccupied playground…

Next, we sipped down some gløgg (spiced wine) and wandered Christiania.

The sun faded pretty quickly after that, so that when we made it back downtown, it was already pitch black. Oh, and it was positively freezing. And raining. Yaaaay. Also, the entire city seemed to shut it’s doors at 4:00, something I’ve never seen before. Dang New Year ruined our chance at more shopping and a real dinner.

One thing we were keeping in mind was that we really wanted to see the famous New Year’s speech that the Danish queen does every year, and we also wanted to warm up, so we grabbed a table at the Hard Rock Cafe to await the big 6:00 appearance.

But alas! Either that silly hostess lied to us, or somebody forgot, because 6:00 came and went with no sign of the queen. It was pretty annoying, honestly, since we really only stopped here for that, and we paid about $20 for a single drink to share. Ugh.

On to Tivoli…

Tivoli is always pretty when dressed for the winter season, and this time around was no different. We dazedly wandered the lights and markets, sipping yet more gløgg and snacking on some very expensive and sub-par æbleskiver (traditional Christmas pancake balls with jam and powdered sugar).

I also found a crazy bathroom that had a normal sized toilet and a tiny kid’s toilet in the same room:

Crazy.

We were too tired to stay for the fireworks at 11, so we headed back to the Airbnb around 9:30. After a quick shower and a nap, we woke up to celebrate the new year by staring in awe at the crazy fireworks in our neighborhood. It was honestly like we were under siege! I’m not kidding. Fireworks everywhere. Big ones. Loud ones. Bright ones. In every direction. And they lasted for nearly an hour after midnight came around! My mom said it was the craziest thing she’d ever seen. Not sure where these crazy Danes got all the money for their pyrotechnics. Must be state-subsidized… Hahaha.

Jonathan and I finished off the night with some flødebøller, to which he remarked, ‘I didn’t know this was missing in my life.’

Flødebøllers are hard to explain without being able to taste it for yourself, but it is essentially little mound of marshmallow fluff covered in a thin, crisp layer of chocolate with a wafer cookie on the bottom. They truly are life-changing.

So, that was how we spent our New Year. Mostly cold and rainy, but it went out with a bang (literally). More come in 2018…

Venlig hilsen/ best regards,

Lizzy-wa