Sainte Lucie (luciadag)

Santa Lucia is celebrated on December 13th and in southern Sweden and Denmark (at least around here), this festival is not quite like any other. Indeed, tradition dictates that girls dress in white and sing (more or less nicely) the "Song of Lucy". One of them (most often one that has the most Facebook friends :-) has the right to personify the saint and wear a crown of candles.
Lucia was a sicilian martyr, so every modern Lucia has the chance to share his suffering thanks to the hot wax dripping from the crown ... For less barbaric people, there are electric candles.
We had the opportunity to attend a parade in Tivoli last year, we hoped that the girls had a wool tee-shirt under their white dress! At least, we could warm up with a good æblegløgg!

Christmas specialties at Tivoli

Every year, you can enjoy the an annual Christmas market in Tivoli. Over the years, this has proven to be quite successful.


In addition to arts and crafts displays, you can also find many "not so usual" Christmas treats. For example, waffle on a stick (for those who miss an ice-cream) or a "Klejner" kind of seasonal donut. You can also try æbleskiver (litterally apple slice, but those donuts actually don't have a single piece of apple in them), traditionnaly you would enjoy them by three with icing sugar and strawberry jam.





To survive trough all this (and the cold), a good mulled wine (gløgg) will do. If the cold is too intense for you, you can "extend" the gløgg (or any hot drink, even an innocent hot chocolate!) with more or less alcohol (usually you have the choice between 2, 4 or 6 cl of added spirit)... Another drink to try: the "hot apple wine," or æblegløgg. Apple juice, white wine, apple, ginger, etc. ... Delicious! I really need to find the recipe!

Jul is back

The Christmas season is now well underway, and all around you can find the distinctive signs.
It begins really early in October with the release of the Christmas beer, then it is the opening of Tivoli.
Then come the Christmas market on Nyhavn (and other places too), the illuminations and decorations in department stores and the ignition of public Christmas trees. Meanwhile, you can notice the installation of Christmas trees and fireworks outlets everywhere... And finally there are the culinary specialties that appear on the shelves (gløgg, æbleskiver, jul akvavit, risalamande, brunkager, ...)
Here is a small series of photographs that describe well the atmosphere. We start the serie of Christmas posts withTivoli!

Jul i Tivoli…

After Halloween, Christmas .... From November 20 to December 30, Tivoli celebrates! There are stalls, Christmas trees, garlands, thousands of lanterns, entertainment, skating, parades of Santas and festive elves, gifts, local crafts, gourmet specialties ... all of that celebrating the magic of Christmas.
We now have the annual Tivoli cards allowing us to visit when we want, just for pleasure. We try to avoid some nights, because the park is often crowded but otherwise the visit is really nice, especially after night fall (which is around 4pm). So don't hesitate, it is worth it!

Halloween again

A few extra photos of Halloween in Tivoli ...
... for example a pumpkin cutting workshop for children (scary!)

... even the orchestra was dressed up!


... and at night, you can see illuminated pumpkins (and our camera batteries died, so no more pictures)!

Pumpkins are back

Like last year, Tivoli (the famous amusement park in the center of Copenhagen) will celebrate Halloween. It starts this weekend. We must admit that the decor was really nice! Never seen so many pumpkins! The alleys of the park were also invaded with shacks selling a whole bunch of stuff (including costumes, pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread ...).
If you can't make it next week (hurry up, it is just one week), mark it in your calendar for next year!