Copenhagen: Too Good to Be True

At least, that's how Frommer titles his chapter about Denmark's capital city. His opening text:

After Copenhagen, Europe can become a footnote. This city has everything: a populace with friendship in their very souls; an astonishing variety of sights and activities; prices that are among the lowest on the continent.

Wait. What?! Let's go ahead and put that last part in the My How Things Have Changed category. These days, one's first impression of this city is, "Um, those prices are typos, right? All of them? Or am I really going to have to sell a kidney to pay for a meal?"

In general, in my experience, prices on the continent are not terribly expensive (compared to back home). In Copenhagen, though, holy crap. I'm guessing--hoping, praying--that it's now among the highest-priced European cities. Wandering the streets today, I don't think I saw much food under 30 DKK (about 5 DKK to the dollar right now, I believe). Even the strudel at the open-air market was 40 DKK (although they were massive and looked delicious; I'll be sampling them in the days to come).

Speaking of food: one Power Bar down the hatch. Already. This is not good. But by the time I checked in to my hotel, I'd been up for ... um, I don't know how many hours; my brain is not working right now. A lot. Over 24. Well over. Enough that I was disoriented, discombobulated, and dazed in a profoundly "people pay a lot of money for this in Amsterdam" kind of way.

So I broke the cardinal rule of fighting jetlag, which is not to sleep until it's actually bedtime in your destination. Mind you, it was only going to be a quick nap. An hour, maybe two. And then back out into the world, refreshed, clear-headed, and hungry for some Danish cuisine. . . . Seven hours later, I awoke, still groggy and seriously tempted to just roll over and fall back to sleep. I hope you'll understand my lack of interest in heading outside, in my severely disoriented and jetlagged state, to explore a now-dark city, armed only with a tiny hand-drawn map that, in addition to being over 40 years old, does not include the portion of town in which I'm staying.

But let me tell you: that Power Bar was delicious.

Back to sleep.

[UPDATE: this post originally included some notes on Scottish pubs, Dutch trattorias (yes, Dutch trattorias), and culinary authenticity. But I'll save those for another day, when my brain is more functional and I can write more coherently.]