The Hamiltons are here!

Two weeks ago (Friday, March 30), I picked up Mom & Dad Hamilton from the Aalborg airport. It's hard to put into words how nice it is to greet someone at the airport - every time we get a visitor, I'm so happy that I'm almost crying. It's a strange thing to live so far away from family and friends, knowing only a few people in Aalborg (or Denmark or Europe, even). This visit has been particularly wonderful, as we've gotten two full weeks with family!

On their first full day in Denmark, we rented a car and took Wally and Marie for a drive around Nordjylland (that's Northern Jutland, or the northern part of Denmark where we live), stopping at the viking graveyard nearby first (a favorite place to take visitors...) and then hitting the coast. We drove on the beach from Blokhus to Løkken and were almost washed out to sea when Andrew drove our miniscule car over a seemingly-tiny streamlet. (It was not actually that tiny.) If that wasn't exciting enough, a few minutes later we got stuck in the sand and had to push the car out. What a morning!

Continuing around the coast, we stopped at an old lighthouse which we climbed up to in the midst of a veritable sandstorm. After stopping for a hotdog and some ice cream (both are must-haves on a trip to Denmark), we stopped at an old windmill and a beautiful church on our route to Skagen, where we walked out on the beach at sunset.

The rest of the week was spent in Aalborg, exploring and shopping, and getting ready to leave on our great train-trip. More pictures on our flickr page!

A Visitor (and a trip to Viborg)

Last weekend we entertained our third ever guest: our friend, Paul. He's in Germany for about a month for work and (since we're so close here in Aalborg...) decided to come for a visit while in Europe. He arrived late Friday night, and after we got home we treated him to some traditional pickled herring with all the fixings: rogbrod, pickled onions, a curry egg salad, and some Aalborg akvavit (Aalborg is famous for its potent shnapps - it's disgusting, but you need it to mask the taste of pickled herring!). Andrew and Paul partook in the herring feast - I've tried it once, and I'm not having any more!

We spent Saturday morning out at the nearby viking graveyard, and this time we went in the museum, which was pretty cool. Lots of old remnants of viking civilization from the area, as well as plenty of information on the time period. Also, we got to try on some viking helmets, which is always fun:

We went to a beer tasting on Saturday afternoon, which was very fun but took over four hours! I was glad I wasn't doing any of the tasting, as I'm sure I would've been under the table. On Sunday, we took Paul around Aalborg. The weather was absolutely amazing (mid 60s, which is a heatwave here) and it seemed like everyone in Aalborg was out eating ice cream and sitting by the Limfjord.

All in all, it was a really wonderful weekend, thanks in most part to our visitor. Yesterday, on Monday, I had to go to Viborg (a town about an hour and a half away) to see the doctor, so Andrew and I made a day of it. It's a very charming town, but the main feature is the cathedral, which is supposedly the largest granite cathedral of its kind in Scandinavia.

More pictures of our fantastic weekend and our daytrip to Viborg are on our flickr page. Our next visitors (Mom and Dad Hamilton) arrive this Friday (yay!) and then we're off on a train adventure through Europe next week (Hamburg, Amsterdam, and Paris)!

A Gent in Ghent (Belgium)

Andrew got to go to Ghent, Belgium last week for work (he gets to go all the nice places!), while I held down the fort here in Aalborg. Just a short trip - only one full day - it really wasn't worth me going, but it sure did look like a nice place to be, if only for a day:

Not to be left out of all of the fun, my sweet husband brought me back some delicious Belgian chocolate (most of which is already gone...):

Beet it!

Every Wednesday and Saturday morning there is a small farmer's market near our apartment. I stopped last Wednesday while I was out and about, lured in by some beautiful beets (Andrew's favorite)! Still not used to seeing items in kg instead of pounds (at this point, I don't think I'll ever get used to the conversion), I over-ordered and we've been eating various beet dishes for almost a week now. I just roasted up the last of them today, but I'll have to freeze them to use later, because I don't think Andrew and I can eat beets any time soon!

my hand (even after several scrubbings)

beet chips

dark chocolate beet cake!

raw beet salad

Happy Valentine's Day

Most Danes don't celebrate Valentine's Day, but Andrew and I had a delicious dinner at home tonight. Hope everyone has as wonderful a valentine as I do, although that's nearly impossible, as Andrew is quite perfect.

A Relæ nice weekend in Copenhagen

Andrew and I got out of Aalborg this weekend for a visit to the big city. Only about a 40 minute flight, it's so easy to get to Copenhagen and there is so much to do! We arrived Friday night in time for a pizza dinner, which I've been craving for months. It wasn't Chicago-style, but it was delicious anyway.

We woke up reasonably early on Saturday and walked around before getting some breakfast (cream puffs at a local bakery) and heading to a few museums. We went to three different art museums on Saturday: Davids Samling (an impressive collection of Islamic art), the Hirschsprungske Samling (a collection of art from the Danish Golden Age + a special exhibit on P. S. Krøyer), and then finished the afternoon at the Statens Museum (the National Gallery). We had a pretty typical Danish smørrebrød for lunch where Andrew was able to get his fix of pickled herring - yuck! The weather was VERY cold this weekend (we even got some snow), but we bundled up and had a great time anyway.

Saturday night we went to Relæ for dinner, a small but amazing restaurant that has been getting some very good press (it is run by a few alumni of Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant that's been named the best restaurant in the world two years in a row now). The style of the restaurant is Nordic cuisine with an emphasis on locally-produced ingredients and there were just two meal options: meat or vegetarian (Andrew ordered the former and I got the latter), both consisting of five set courses. The courses were all interesting, but not all to my liking. Andrew, for example, had a course of veal tongue, which I could barely stomach one bite of, but I had a really delicious beet, apple, & seaweed salad which was amazing, and my main course was even better: kale, walnuts, and salted pears. Dessert was a bit of a letdown, though, as I'm always craving chocolate or cake of some kind - instead, we were basically served a deconstructed ice cream: mandarin orange slices, frozen buttermilk (almost like dippin' dots), and a raw egg yolk on top. We were both very happy with the meal overall, and we're certainly glad we got to eat there while we're living here.

On Sunday we did a little more wandering, but spent several hours at two more museums: the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek and then the Danish Design Museum. The latter wasn't that great, but the Carlsberg museum was probably the best place we went all weekend - I suppose being a beer baron gives one the luxury of buying a lot of very nice art! They house a fantastic collection of French Impressionists and one of the few complete collections of Degas' bronzes, a personal favorite.

We didn't leave until this morning, catching a 7:30am flight back to Aalborg before Andrew had to go in to work. Luckily, I don't work at all on Mondays, so I just get to nap and unpack today! If you want to see more pictures of our weekend, they're on our flickr page, and all of our stops are tagged on the map below.

View Weekend in Copenhagen: Feb, 2012 in a larger map

Feliz Navidad!

Yes, we're living in Denmark this year, but we spent the holidays in the Canary Islands! We arrived on Christmas morning and spent the whole week relaxing in the sun. On Monday, we luxuriated at the spa for several hours, and then lounged at the pool for a few more hours before going into the nearby town/fishing village, Puerto de las Nieves, for a wonderful dinner. We ate there several more times during the week, each meal seemingly better than the one before.

On Tuesday we went horseback riding through several nearby banana farms, and Wednesday was spent hiking. Andrew found a trail online that was supposed to be easy, but it turned out that the last third of it was basically scaling down a cliff (which we didn't do). Thursday we spent the afternoon at the pool and on Friday we went back to the spa. Saturday came way too early and we were a bit sad to leave all the warmth and sunlight.

More pictures of our wonderful vacation are on my flickr page here.