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the wee small hours

Nighthawks, Edward Hopper ‘Nothing good happens after 2am’ – Ted Moesby In a former version of this life, the demise of which is not even baby related, 2am could be the start of bedtime. Each nightly tick around to the grey minutes in the depth of the day signalling the end of another chapter of a life lived on the edge of the bank balance. It could be meeting a housemate on the sofa after…

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vowel sounds

(Credit: matthew dicks)

My mum is the nurturing kind. “How are you feeling?”, “Are you hungry?”, “Of course you can bring everyone you know home with you for dinner!”. But converse to mum’s approach, as teens and twenty somethings are want to do, I was slow to reply to any parental concern. Add to that I quickly moved 6,000 miles away to Canada and paid by the text for each message and the…

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Nerja // A Surprising Gem

Nerja // A Surprising Gem

I travelled to Nerja before I was asked to write this blog but this blog is a paid promotion for Clickstay, easily book premium villas around the world online.

When my sister, Christine and I, decided to book a holiday with our then boyfriends we only really thought about the pool we would chill by. In reality, agreeing on a destination for four 30-somethings was never going to be an easy…

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becalmed

It’s hard to describe the stillness of a london summer, once the spring gloom lifts. The air is still. The noise feels muted, with the exception of the tarmac outside of pubs. The city quickly & quietly bakes. Heat rises. The City, from the overhot tarmack and paving slabs, warming gaps between buildings. Any rogue breeze kicked up by upwinds between them is warm. Each ray injects increasingly…

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Coming and Going content

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becalmed

It’s hard to describe the stillness of a london summer, once the spring gloom lifts. The air is still. The noise feels muted, with the exception of the tarmac outside of pubs. The city quickly & quietly bakes. Heat rises. The City, from the overhot tarmack and paving slabs, warming gaps between buildings. Any rogue breeze kicked up by upwinds between them is warm. Each ray injects increasingly…

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the dance

I dance every day with strangers. Each performance slightly different, artistic licence as the players change. Forever replaying the same scenes, our rehearsals constant, these moves have been years in the making. The step left, half step right to avoid the rapidly descending footsteps thundering behind me. I dared to step out of line on the standing side. The push for the empty space up ahead in…

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Clockwise from top: 1.Delicious Warpigs, 2.conveniently named Skaal (cheers in Danish) has many taps to try, 3.supping some delights in Mikkeller bar #1, 4.fermented chips in Brus (read on for noms), 5.Copenhagen inlet awaiting a canal tour, 6.bikes in the snow, 7.MOMO (currently closed) in Copenhagen harbour & 8.traditional pickled herring & dill with rye bread in PIK. 

After some 22 hours in Copenhagen, a kindly waiter taught me my first Danish phrase – moy ab be om (bear with the phonetics!) which means ‘Please can I have’ (I am assured). Landing from Stanstead late on a Friday evening for a city break, we understood how to check in but not how to fit in. Staying at the Babette Guldestein (Bredgade 78, https://guldsmedenhotels.com/) is a how-to in cool. Chilled staff with better English than I could articulate after a Ryan Air delay, welcome us to the hotel. ‘Your booking is already paid for but let us know if there is anything else you need’. As a couple creeping back from the air bnb wilderness of freestyle breakfast dining hours and constant trips to Carrefour, a hotel could have been a system shock. With a leather and light filled lobby, the 24 hour bar in direct line of sight of the reception, four poster beds and a rooftop spa (with admittedly obscure opening hours), it was a very positive shock.

The Guldestein is a family run hotel with 5 substantial branches, expanding slowly since the 90s. Ecologically friendly credentials in everything from towels and toiletries to the organic spirits in the bar and locally sourced seasonal food. Even around 90% of their waste is recycled, if that’s important to you. With every effort to make luxury sustainable, in this world of single use plastic, they are surely in the frame for a stampede of non Brexit Brits and their Keepcups, surprised that they can afford to pretend to fit in there.

The kilometres With 48 hours in Copenhagen and a typically millennial attitude to research: “What is the wifi code?”, we loaded a self guided walking tour into Google, which some generous internet citizen had created and some 18,000 steps later, we were very aware of having highly underestimated the size of little Copenhagen. From The Little Mermaid on her non original rock (she’s been blasted off of it, had her head chopped off and been dressed, probably flatteringly, in underwear) to the barracks at Kastellet, the Palace at Kongens Have, and the University area Kobenhavns. Unicorn spires, university spires and spiral staircase spires. The light festival illuminating several highlights on the waterfront: suspended rubber bouncing pots across from a currently closed Momo, a lucky horseshoe glittering from across the ocean inlet and a flashing corridor of triangles lighting the way.

The consumption Of course there were many pit stops to whet our whistle during this (half) marathon of tourist intake. Friday night favourite The Black Swan (Borgergade 93, http://www.blackswanbar.dk/) had Dulwich vibes with colour blocked bookcases and piles of blankets, not to mention full to the brim with toasty locals. Saturday brought trips to the 61 tap offering in modern Skaal (Kultorvet 11, http://skaal.dk/) where we thawed for a time before offering our patronage after a snowy pilgrimage to Mikkeller #1 (Viktoriagade 8B). Typically for Mikkeller, the bar lurks in an unassuming street with completely missable signage. Reminded of our attempt to visit Mikkeller Reykjavik which we navigated to in the dark, the door of which is located on a veranda entrance above a closed restaurant, the bar was infinitely more discoverable in the land of the original Mikkeller. Off to War Pigs (Flæsketorvet 25, http://warpigs.dk/) we trooped in the snow because if you’re not traipsing to the continent to drink schooners and eat smoked meats in an industrial estate then should you even be allowed to drink craft beer? The Burnt Ends Baked Beans cannot be described, they must be experienced. The runners club loitering in there seemed in need of the justification to endure the weather by their destination, at least they had worked that Bisket off before arriving.

Later a tasting menu of much herring and other local fare was had at Restaurant Puk (Vandkunsten 8, https://www.restaurantpuk.dk/) and satisfied that the basic budget was likely blown with beer starting prices of 105kr, we indulged in nightcaps of freshly tapped beers listed on digital screens at Tap House (Lavendelstræde 15, https://taphouse.dk/). The Library Bar (Bernstorffsgade 4, https://ligula.se/da/the-library-bar) came highly recommended by the owner at PUK but dear reader, another kilometre might have killed me.

Sunday dawned bright and flipping freezing as flat cities in high pressure seem want to be. Attempting to emulate the stylish Danes in their wool coats, sensible leather apparel and excellent posture, we hopped on bikes and slowly lost finger function using the illogical maps of pedal powered rental bike mapping and headed over to Norrebro to Mikkeller (Stefansgade 35), happily local to the bike docking point and BRUS. BRUS (Guldbergsgade 29, https://tapperietbrus.dk/) is nothing short of perfect, personally. An echo of any interpretation of Scandi style but simplicity beautifully executed in a reasonably ‘up and coming’ area. Cozy up in a booth for hot bar snacks (never miss out on the fermented chips) or sit down in the open, tactile wonder of the restaurant where the open kitchen further astounds. That it is in a one story former storage block will give you some idea of scale but added hygge came in the form of optional blankets for the concrete seats and the warm feeling inevitably left by 7% beer.

The chaos The Copenhagens take traffic seriously. Crossing at a zebra, we were hauled up on offence some 300m from the crossing itself. The crime: utilising an (assumed) zebra crossing ineffectively. Their ‘Why did you do that?’ fell on confused faces (not even fresh from the pub yet) as it transpired that crime is so low in Denmark the police will roughly educate you in the rules of the road, even as a confused foreign pedestrian. Needless to say we were pedantic pedestrians for the remainder of the duration.

Outside of the mild peril with the Police, a 48 hour break in Copenhagen for us was just enough time. Seeing the city on foot was a great way to find our bearings on top of allowing us to discover the inventive kitchen creations of a very winter City and then warm up with significantly warming Belgian strength beer. You may note that the canal tour pictured is not covered. If you want somewhere cozy to go for an hour which is not a bar, that is the outing for you. In other wins however, we also covered 24.4k in our two days on the ground leaving us in no doubt that little Copenhagen, is not so.

The conclusion 48 hours in Copenhagen. I wish I’d never left. A wool coat and walking boots might not be the danish style but as it turns out, the Danes don’t need you to fit in as much as they want you to file in. Every one welcoming and beautiful, complete with a thorough grasp of English syntax and idioms, it’s easy to feel at home in a country that remains beautifully alien.

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Copenhagen Clockwise from top: 1.Delicious Warpigs, 2.conveniently named Skaal (cheers in Danish) has many taps to try, 3.supping some delights in Mikkeller bar #1, 4.fermented chips in Brus (read on for noms), 5.Copenhagen inlet awaiting a canal tour, 6.bikes in the snow, 7.MOMO (currently closed) in Copenhagen harbour & 8.traditional pickled herring & dill with rye bread in PIK. 

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Test Travel post

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winter is coming

Is it? In December I boarded the train to the airport on December 21st in bare arms. My jacket slung through the handles on my typically overpacked bag. My face having a product fail as the primer went to the wall creating a lovely, less than matte sheen from the balmy 15 odd degrees December we were enjoying. I say enjoying, no one was. It was all we could do not to constantly complain about the…

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pub? pub.

Photo credit: The Norwich Illustrated Pub Crawl

Pub? Pub. The shortest British conversation. The most straightforward. The outcome, assured. A fun time had by all, with the exception of those interminable pub quiz evenings.

The pressure to drink in this most sprawling of metropolitan spaces, is constant. Realistically the only responsibility my peers and I have here is to turn up to work and pay…

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fake news

Fake news. An oxymoron in itself. News is fact, as much as can be reported. Accuracy is key. Good reporters thrive on their integrity, their sources must be beyond reproach. Fake people are a thing too. Look at the practice of cat fishing. I have a theory that ‘The Donald’s’ narcissism has had a broader wave of wave of impact than can be comprehended. Validating and justifying fakery and as a…

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bare faced lies

I do my make-up on the tube. Yes, I am one of those people who have boundless self esteem and are happy to brave their naked face to fellow commuters…of course in actual fact I am one of those people with an elastic concept of time, and an inability to forgo breakfast just to support a social facade for the benefit of commuters I don’t know. Toast in one hand, compact in the other, juggling a…

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wasn't before

wasn’t before

I’ve been writing this specific blog in spits and spots for years but I could never quite corral the bits and pieces I’ve written into one stream. The tone had to be quite right for this blog, it seemed. It shouldn’t be ranting, to avoid the hysterical woman feedback. It shouldn’t be unnecessarily aggressive lest I am labelled a ball breaker. And yet as my own opinion, I wonder why I should feel…

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how the hotel do you get outta' here?

how the hotel do you get outta’ here?

I have stayed in approximately three hotels in the last 3 years. One, a bnb in sad Seaton on the Dorset coast. Sad as while Dorset’s Jurassic Coast is outrageously fascinating, and sister towns Beer and Axemouth are delightfully quaint, Seaton is the equivalent of a wet weekend in a static caravan. Several new year nights in a Novotel with questionable construction-site security – we were able to…

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olivia says relax

 ‘Consider it handled’. What a stressful phrase. Yes I see your problem, I have already analysed the infinite ways that all of the infinite solutions could go wrong and yet I have determined that regardless, one of them will work and so I have already solved this’. Anything for a quiet life, right. But Olivia Pope doesn’t know what to do with a quiet life. She never does get to the bottom of that…

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My #Salcombe poppies - some weeks ago mind. Poppy seeds taken from a HUGE poppy head collected last Sept in Devon. Unfortunately my inability to water my flower boxes while I went on holiday to #Salcombe this summer meant they were a lot less effervescent when I got back 😁 yep, I mean dead.