things to do when family comes visiting

my sister and her boyfriend and my dad are coming to visit in about a month. i hope this infernal winter is over by then, because i have lots of plans for what we're going to do. we're going to butcher a few of those excess roosters and make chicken soup, for one.

if the nettles are out, we'll have nettle pesto and nettle gnocchi.

if people aren't behaving, i'll send them out to pick nettles without gloves.

and if the dandelions have started, dandelion fritters.

we'll head out for a day (or two) at the beach at the west coast. it's always a bit cold there, it being the north sea and all, so we'll probably just have to be prepared to bundle up for that.

we'll also spend some time lazing around and napping. molly demonstrates that quite nicely, i think.

surely posh gin will be drunk. weather permitting, out the garden.

and we will visit the port in esbjerg (and probably drink some port afterwards, just to keep it within the theme).

we'll eat loads of good food, play cards and putter around in the garden. i'm hoping maybe j will take a look at what's making that rattling sound underneath the toyota. husband will undoubtedly show off his sawmill and we'll have at least one evening with a bigger group of people invited to eat, drink and laugh. it will be good to just hang out with them before they rush off to london, omaha beach and paris. so we're counting down the days.

raw lunch and artistic globes

yesterday, i spent the day wandering around copenhagen with miss buckle, who is in town, attending events surrounding the COP 15 UN meeting on climate change that's happening in copenhagen right now. copenhagen is full of people speaking other languages and even the danes (which are few, since all of the people in shops and restaurants are swedes these days) in all of the shops in copenhagen seem to have forgotten to speak danish.

in the interest of kindness to the environment (and of course being healthy), we started off our wander with lunch (as one does) at a new raw food restaurant in the heart of copenhagen. it's called 42°RAW. i'd been wanting to try a raw restaurant since buying charlie trotter's raw "cook"book several years ago, but could never convince anyone to go to one with me. to my knowledge, there wasn't a raw restaurant in copenhagen before this one opened anyway. we really enjoyed the food. i had a brilliant salad with beets, seaweed and a horseradish dressing and miss buckle's pumpkin salad was loaded with pumpkin seeds and salty olives (we did wonder how raw they were, but we were cool with being eased into the concept). and the pumpkin on her salad was just a gorgeous, vibrant orange. we ordered fresh juices to go with our salads - mine was carrot, apple and ginger and hers was beet apple and ginger and they were just great. the restaurant also serves coffee (not that raw, i think), but we waited to get coffees later. we really loved the experience and i will definitely be dragging husband back there to show him that the occasional raw meal can be a good thing. after our tummies were filled, we began to wander in search of interesting people and things.

some of my favorites were these art globes displayed around kongs nytorv.

this one was my favorite.

i'm a sucker for colors, what can i say?

i liked how graffiti-style writing was used on this one.

this one highlighted the butterflies.

check out the police and uniformed military in the background.

this one advocated wearing a sweater rather than turning up the heat.

this one wanted us to drive less.

there were many more and they were all thought provoking. but my favorite was that at the base of each one was this sign:

it was pretty surprising to me that the shops didn't seem to have taken the opportunity to have an environmental theme to their window displays. they just seemed to be selling the same old christmas excess. i found that a little disappointing. but at least in this shot, you can see a bit of me and miss buckle.

at least the posh illum's bolighus had a bit of a nature theme going on, even if it was mostly just stumps on which to display the expensive designer items:

we saw quite a lot of police around on the streets, usually standing together with members of the home guards (hjemmeværn) in military uniform. we even overheard one conversation where they were calling in a report of a homemade sign on the side of a building. as miss buckle said, "if only they'd had their sign professionally done..." apparently the danes' aesthetic sensibilities are quite insulted by hand lettered signs and the public had to be protected.

i've got much more to share, but i'll leave it for another post.

stars in my eyes

here's what i got to see of kuala lumpur today. i spent the whole day in this building that's covered in these starlike thingies. so the entirety of what i saw of KL (other than the airport, which for reasons unfathomable to me, claims to be the world's favorite (just not sure what world)) was through this starry lens...

look, it's the petronas towers!

and some kind of tower thingie that's even taller (i'm really tuned into the sights of KL, eh?)

the architecture was all over the place

but it looked charming from the 17th floor.

entire building covered in this stuff.

and strangely, the main entrance was through the car park.

i think they may have blinded the architect BEFORE he built it.

more tomorrow....
wishing you an adventure-filled weekend.
wherever you are.