Gifts, Glitter and Glogg

After a long morning we really craved a cup of coffee, so racking our brains for the memory of a lovely café we had once visited, we remembered one in a small courtyard behind the Angleterre. We did find it, but still can’t remember its name! Here we ordered cappuccinos and Danish spice Christmas cake. This looked wonderful – a ring cake made with Christmas spices with a topping of figs, which is then covered with white icing. It was delicious, and we loved the cosy atmosphere with candles everywhere and lots of Danes enjoying it, too.
Feeling refreshed, we made our way out onto Stroget again, walking back to the Bodum shop, Ostergade – four floors of Bodum products as well as Ordning and Reda stationery. They were cooking tiny bread rolls and making hot chocolate in the Bodum Chocolatiere, which we were invited to taste. Scrumptious! But we had to move on, as the Georg Jensen shop was pulling us towards its glittering windows and warm interior. This is one of our favourite shops on Amagertorv where they sell the whole range of Georg Jensen Design. The Christmas department is lovely, with special Christmas designs for each year, and also in the basement there is a small exhibition if their old designs. If you are clever, you can wander through the door at the back of the shop into the Holmegaard/ Royal Copenhagen shop next door. Here again are floors of wonderful Danish design in glass and porcelain and at this time of the year, there are some stunning Christmas displays and annual plates and glasses to tempt you. In the passage between this and the next shop there is a café, which we by passed, and walked on into Illums Bolighus. More ideas for gifts – all those beautifully designed things you never knew you needed. It’s breathtaking! Luckily by now, we know that you can just feast your eyes on all this splendour without crippling your wallet, as you can really spend a lot of money on all those lovely things. So at last we dragged ourselves away to enjoy the atmosphere out in the pedestrian area: Christmas lights; music; food sellers; people dressed in all sorts of garb from t-shirts to fur coats; others practicing tricks such as ‘find the bean’ using three matchboxes; a man being a statue of a Viking; and lots more. It was dark now, and feeling a lot colder, so we decided that it was time for a glass of Jul Glogg. If, like me, you thought that this was just another version of mulled wine, you’d be wrong. We had a short seminar on it from the man who drove us in from the airport, who is a chef when he’s not driving. Apparently, where he 'chefs' they start by soaking raisins in brandy until they are plump with the liquor; red wine is mulled with Christmas spices; almonds are cut into slivers. The drink is then assembled with the raisins at the bottom of a heat proof glass with a handle. The mulled wine is poured over the top and then the whole is topped off with slivered almonds. It is generally served with small spice biscuits. But looking at recipes, it is more traditionally made with aquavit. I suspect every family has its own version. So, we went in search of a warming glass and were not disappointed. It looked perfect with plump raisins lurking at the bottom of our steaming glasses topped off with slivers of almonds; and there were the little spice biscuits on the side. They also persuaded us to have some more traditional Christmas sweetmeats. This time we were served three small yeasty dough balls that had been deep fried and drenched in icing sugar. Could these be a Danish variation of the Dutch Oliebollen? It certainly looked that way to us! Whatever, they were very tasty and would certainly fill the gap to dinner.
More window shopping and a stroll back to the Marriott and our room with a view, which took us all along the perimeter of Tivoli. The rides were now in full swing accompanied by screams as riders were twirled into the air and dropped to the ground. Rather them than me. The gardens did look lovely with the fairy lights in the trees and coloured lights reflected off the water in the lake. The Marriott is situated on the Kalvebod Brygge, overlooking the water separating the city from the island. In fact, if you know where to look you can see the bridge across Oresund to Sweden and the planes coming in to land at Kastrup. We dined in the hotel at the Terraneo Restaurant, where we had a delicious meal before retiring fairly early as we have another early start in the morning.