The Best Birthday Evaaaar

Ok, the day went like this: leisurely breakfast on the ship, leisurely walk to the center of the city, leisurely stop at a pastry shop, leisurely stroll in the pedestrian only shopping district, checking into our hotel to find it’s the craziest place ever, awesome romp through two yarn stores, leisurely lunch (pizza prepared by actual Italians), more leisurely strolling and shopping, beer tasting and brewery tour (so cool!), leisurely stroll down to the docks where we had reservations at an organic (!) restaurant, leisurely dinner finished at like 10:30 (!), leisurely stroll back to the craziest hotel ever. This was seriously like the best birthday ever. Better than my fifth birhtday party where we had ballerina themed plates and cups and we got to make our own party hats. Better than my thirteenth birthday where we had a 6 foot sub and a shaving cream fight. Better than my twenty-first birthday where […edited for content…].

When my parents visited Copenhagen, their tour organizers had some scuba divers meet them at the little mermaid statue and pop up out of the water with champagne. We saw the statue on the way from the docks to downtown. I couldn’t resist stopping for a photo op.

That japanese guy in the yellow shirt pushed me off my first rock, so I moved over a bit!

My grandparents sent me a generous birthday check, which was quickly eaten up at this yarn store, Strikkeboden. I got a nice amount of a well-priced cotton/linen yarn, some squishy black alpaca, and two skeins of a very very nice japanese yarn.

It’s Noro silk garden. Yum!

We just stumbled upon this place, Uldstedet, and it was awesome!

It’s Rowan Tapestry, I hadn’t seen it before. Very Noro-like color progression and depth. But less excentric feeling.

It wasn’t the lovliest view behind me. :)

What are you talking about?! It took me an hour to photoshop that guy into your wine glass.

Chris teased me that I didn’t part with the bag of yarn for the whole trip.

THE WHOLE TRIP!

“You want me to carry that?” “No.”

“You want me to stick it in my bag? There’s room.” “No.”

“You want to leave that in the hotel room?” “No.”

I understand, though. I was the same way when I got my 30-inch monitor for my birthday. (Also known as “Katy’s monitor”.)

Yes, 7-11 is taking over the world.

Slutspurt! Ha! I always get a kick out the these signs (Danish is almost exactly the same as Norwegian, at least to my eye). It means roughly “huge sale” or something like that.

We had our own little beer tasting before the tour. That’s a dunkelweisen, a red ale, and their “Cole Porter” porter.

I think I liked the dunkelweisen best, though the porter was very good also. The red ale came in 3rd for me.

Exact opposite of my ordering. The dunkelweisen was fine, but I’m just moving away from wheat beers, I think.

The red ale was fabulous! Floral, hoppy, clean… and the porter was a perfectly decent porter. But that red… it was good.

The courtyard at this place was great, with those big sun shade/sail things. The color was very warm and welcoming.

When we saw that the food menu was based all around their beers, we had to try some of the more fantastic-sounding dishes. This is a red ale ice cream with porter sabayonne. Oh man — it was really good.

Of course I never stopped daydreaming about the yarn. On top is the japanese yarn, Noro silk garden. Next, the brown and pink yarns are Danish!, the blue is the cotton/linen and the black is the squishy alpaca.

These cows (in various forms and disguises) were all over the city, and while we were finishing our beer and dessert, two guys came in and took this ladybug-themed one out of a storage area.

They actually had to lift it over our table to get it out of the courtyard.

I’m sure Chris will correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is where they extract the sweet yummy goodness from the whole grains (e.g. the mash tun).

From the crushed grains, yeah. It’s not just extraction, it’s also enzymatic conversion of starches into sugars. And then the extraction of those sugars.

This is the primary fermetor, I think.

It was one of three beautiful conical fermentors. Oh, to have a conical of my very own…

Is it dunkelweisen, or Edna’s Undies? I never got a chance to ask. But oh how I wondered.

Best desktop wallpaper evaaaar! (Stretch, not center.)

At first, I must admit, I had no idea why she took this pic. But now I see the genius of it. One of my favorite non-offspring-themed pictures.

The hotel was close to the brew pub so we dropped off a few things before heading to dinner.

Each room is designed by an artist, and this was maybe the most eccentric of all of them. It was called the Fox Hotel.

I had to take a picture of the yarn with the llama. Because we all know where alpaca comes from, right?

Peru? Mama alpacas? Oh, I give up.

These were the starters. Chantrell mushrooms for me, and some sort of orange fish product for Chris (the waitress said “like caviar, but not”). It was delicious.

Chris is enjoying the meal, but maybe not me taking pictures :).

That’s not contempt — I was just chewing.

Some moments were not meant to be captured.

No pictures of the kids this week! Crazy! But Chris and I went on a fairly epic birthday cruise/weekend away to Copenhagen. I still have many warm and fuzzy memories and think of it often. Lauren stayed with the kids, which was super nice of her of course. This was the week I started working at Maristova, too.