The weather reports we’d been watching (in Danish) kept mentioning a juledag 1 and juledag 2. We got completely baffled, until we realised they meant Christmas Day and Boxing Day. I suppose it doesn’t make much sense that we call it Boxing Day really.
Anyway, we planned to spend Christmas Day 1 in Tivoli, another place we hadn’t been to before. But first, I dragged Husband all the way up to the Assistens Cemetery. Admittedly, visiting a cemetery isn’t the most festive thing someone can do on Christmas Day, but this was my Christmas and I’ll do as I damn well please. We found Hans Christian Anderson’s grave to wish him a Merry Christmas, and then walked through the rest of the park.
After the cemetery, we stopped by a Lagkagehuset on the corner of Nørrebrogade and had the most perfect kanelsnegles – omg, just thinking about them now is making me crave one like nothing else. I’m going to have to find a Danish bakery near me so I can have a daily kanelsnegle.
We thought about walking down Jægersborggade, which is a very trendy street indeed, but didn’t think it would be worthwhile seeing as everything would be closed, so we went over to Tivoli. As it turns out, Tivoli in the daytime with no children – not so fun. I had read somewhere that you needed at least 3-4 hours to go round the whole place, but we managed it in about half an hour. I really thought we were missing a huge part of the park, but no. This was it. OK.
We cut our losses and left, grabbing a couple of re-entry tickets for the evening fireworks, and got the metro back to the hotel. The wind had got really quite wicked at this point so we resorted to my favourite afternoon activity – napping. YES!
We’d booked dinner for 6pm at the MASH Penthouse which was just around the corner from the Tivoli fireworks, so headed over to experience “an amazing view of the Copenhagen rooftops”. Also, it was the only place we could get a reservation.
We’d been to a MASH before and neither of us were particularly impressed – especially not at the insane prices – but we thought we’d give them another go because a) Christmas, and b) this was a newish restaurant. Well, fool me once and all that. It’s not that MASH is bad, but it’s just crazy expensive and we didn’t even get any Christmas treats! Plus, the “amazing view” was of the Copenhagen Central station railway tracks. It was basically having dinner overlooking Clapham Junction.
Anyway, the meal enabled us to be in the right place to go back into Tivoli. We were second time lucky, as our evening visit to Tivoli felt magical.
There were lights everywhere you looked and wasn’t overly crowded so really felt special. The only thing that would have made it better would have been snow (I may have mentioned the LACK OF SNOW). Husband managed to get some gløgg and also some weird sugary bread thing (I still have no idea what that was). Tivoli + lights + gløgg = FUNTIMES!
The one criticism I had is that we couldn’t find any information about where the fireworks would be held. We knew they were at 8.45, so aimlessly stumbled around until we came across a crowd. “A-ha!” we thought, and positioned ourselves near the front. And then security started yelling at everyone in Danish and cordoning off areas, so we ended up squished behind a group of Christmas trees. It was a bit chaotic and would have bene better if there was some forward planning.
We did at least get to see the fireworks which were very pretty, even if I had a tree pressed up against my face. The crowd dispersed politely once it was over, and I went on the hunt for a Tivoli Christmas decoration. I would sadly leave the park without a bauble, but with about a ton of popcorn from the Tivoli Popcorn Factory which would sustain us for the next couple of days.
We ended up getting the bus back to the hotel. We were very proud of ourselves for mastering the buses, even if it took us back through a really odd abandoned building site somewhere in Amager Vest. I felt like a proper Dane.
untold blisses 