Royal Copenhagen!

Copenhagen – 24-27th August posted by LP

It was our first long weekend in London, so one of our to go to destination was Copenhagen; pictures of the place always looked so pretty. We couldn’t afford to go here using $AUD, but since we were earning £, we thought, now or never!!

We left early on Saturday morning (there’s online check-in which we can pick our seats and print the boarding pass) and went straight through to security, very convenient. Copenhagen airport was lovely, but everything is so expensive!! Trying to find the city centre on the train map was hard, I was trying to find Central or Copenhagen central, but it was spelt Kobenhaven, we ended asking someone… Each time we are faced with a delay, I always say to Joe “we would have lost if we were on the Amazing race!”

We spent the day walking around the city, which was really nice, relaxing, fresh sea breeze, and had a bit of space when walking around. We didn't feel we were crammed in with too many people like in London. A lot of people got around on bicycles, and why not? They had a separate bike lane for cyclists, next to the footpath away from cars. It was amazing, I wish other cities was like this, I wish London and Sydney was like this. The city of Copenhagen even provided free bike hire for tourists, although finding one was a challenge as they were snapped up so early in the morning.

Our Canal cruise highlighted the difference between Old Copenhagen and New Copenhagen. Old Copenhagen is where the old town centre with all old buildings, New Copenhagen has all the converted warehouses to apartments along the canals which are lined with boats and yachts. It reminds me of many Woolloomooloo wharf joined together with restaurants and cafes at street levels. A great lifestyle!

We also visited Tivoli Garden, which is one of Copenhagen's famous attractions, it was a theme park, which caters for kids (rides, games, activities) and also adults (orchestra, Jazz, restaurants and many more). It was a great theme park, small, but intimate and we saw so many old people, just there to enjoy the entertainment.

A visit to Copenhagen cannot be complete without seeing the statue of the Little Mermaid, we had to do it, although I find it quite intriguing how a part of a fairy tale has become one of Copenhagen’s famous landmark.

We climbed the Vor Frelser Kirke aka Our saviour’s church, which has over 400 steps up the tower - and the last steps are external spiral staircase around the roof. Scary if you afraid of heights. Now I am not afraid of heights (that much) however when a strong gust of wind came along, it did make me feel nervous, and I had to lower my centre of gravity so I won’t lose my balance! The view from the top is breathtaking, well worth the steep climb up and numerous mini heart attacks!

Copenhagen is a great city, beautiful, walkable, and yummy hotdog stands everywhere. If only it wasn’t so expensive!! Not sure if when we will ever go back, but glad to have finally visited this charming city.

Ah Paris, the city of LOVE

Magical Paris, 10-12^th August

Our 5 year anniversary was spent in romantic city of Paris!! We arrived early in the morning, and the first thing Joe and I could think of, was how to track down Pho!! Joe did his research and navigated through Paris metro system to the Viet town of Paris. The 2 restaurants on our to try list was right next to each other. We ordered and waited for our steaming bowls of pho to arrive. To our delight, it was delicious, fragrant and tasty broth, with slippery noodles and nice tasting meat with all the extra mints and sprouts.. ahhh there was silence for a while whilst we enjoyed eating and not didn’t want to waste precious eating time with talking!! After fuelling up, we were on the hunt for pork rolls (which they don’t have in London) we tracked a shop we’ve been to before down, and the best thing, it was in a proper baguette!! I was very very happy!!

Now for the site seeing, we headed up to Galeries LaFayette the beautiful department store, the interior was breath taking, Harrods is so over rated…. This is one beautiful shop!! Of course I was in heaven now, as I strolled through the huge designer shoe collections.. pity it’s so expensive, but a girl can dream! We then headed to the hotel to have a mini nap, as we’ve done it before where we just went and by 5/6pm we are dead.

In the afternoon we decided to take it easy and walk along the river and admire the gorgeous sceneries and atmosphere, I love the apartments in Paris, especially with the Juliette balconies… we decided to take a cruise down the river during twilight period, enjoying the slights from the boat cruise, great way to see the city, as we approached the Eiffel tower, it light up with lights.. it’s almost 10pm, and being the photographer Joe is, we navigated our way back to the Eiffel tower for night photos, which turned our spectacular!!

Sunday morning, we made our way to Arc De Triomphe, it’s nice just to sit there and admire the details of the monument. We strolled down the Champs-Élysées, I love it, but to Joe it’s just another shopping strip. We’ve walked the strip previously before, but I still find it magical. We made our way down to the Louvre, which we still have done yet, but I am waiting to go during winter so that there are less tourists. The stroll took a good couple of hours, and I was sad when we went to pick up our bags to make our way back to life in London. Oh well, at least I know that we will be back soon…

Tour de London

On Sunday, Lisa finally got on a bike again, to try out her new bike... and do as the Londoners do, I got her a folding bike. It's the best thing, since there's not much room in our apartment for 1 full sized bike, let alone 2 bikes and for £60, I think it was a good purchase. I used to laugh at seeing people back at home in Sydney riding a folding bike, but over here, it is the norm.

We went for a ride from Chiswick where we live, rode along the river Thames down to Hammersmith, and crossed Hammersmith bridge. We continued along a dirt track following the river, which reminded me of the rides we used to take with some of our friends along Parramatta through Rhodes. We got to Putney bridge, crossed that and headed home. It was a great sunny, warm Sunday afternoon ride along the river.....ahh...... feels just like as if we were home.

Cambridge day trip

On Saturday, Lisa and I went to Cambridge to see the famous Cambridge university. We caught a train from Liverpool St to Cambridge, which took about an hour and 15 minutes. It was nice as we zipped through the small towns, and the country side outside London, passing farms, rivers, and river house boats.

When we arrived at Cambridge, the station was full with people, trying to leave Cambridge. Getting to the city center of Cambridge was about a 5 minute bus ride, and once there, we just wondered through the stoned streets, lined with chapels, churches, colleges and shops. It was a nice, and relaxed atmosphere as some of the roads being closed to traffic, allowed you to just wander around.

We passed Trinity college where Sir Issac Newton once studied, we saw the apple tree (a descendant of the original anyway), in which an apple dropped on his head, and born the gravity theory. We also entered Kings college to see the magnificent chapel, and buildings in the college grounds.


As we walked the streets, we saw many students were sprawled along the road, trying to get tourists to join them on a punting tour. Punting was fun, and required quite a bit of co-ordination, we hired a punt and took to the river ourselves... it took about 15 minutes for me to get used to how to steer the thing. I rammed a few other punts a couple of times, and got rammed a couple of times, nearly fell off a couple of times too. We made our way up and down the river for about an hour, passing though the back of some of the colleges of Cambridge university. Passing under some famous bridges such as the Mathematical bridge, Clare bridge and Bridge of Sighs. After 1 hour of punting and trying to stay on, I was sweating and aching.

The rest of the afternoon we spent wondering through more colleges, shops, back streets, canals and parks. We enjoyed going to Cambridge, and was a long time coming after putting it off for so long due to bad weather. I am glad we waited for a nice sunny day to go, otherwise there would have been no where to hide from the rain. It was a great day out, and great to get out of the London concrete jungle and congestion.