I know — there are a LOT of pictures of canals on this blog, but, well, they’re very pretty — and they’re all over the place. (There are canals in three directions from my apartment, each within a block.) But the main thing that prompted these pictures was the tide. I’d never seen it so high. The boats are practically at the same level as the cars.

Look at the bridge in the third image. There’s no way anything but a row boat would have been able to pass that night.

These are six second exposures, which is why the water appears glossy and the lights are so dramatic. I took these in January, in case you’re wondering why there are no leaves on the trees.

Copenhagen, like most cities, has a lot of graffiti. In most places it gets painted over right away, but in some places it stays up for a long time. Naturally the vast majority is an eyesore, but sometimes you’ll see stuff that is… not terribly painful to look at.

I went for a fantastic 44 kilometer ride on Saturday, down to the south of Amager. I went through Tårnby on the way down, which is a fairly unremarkable area, not far from the Ørestad area mentioned in a previous post. Unremarkable, except for this strange tower.

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Copenhagen is a fantastic place to ride. There are bike lanes on just about every street, and bike racks everywhere. Better yet, drivers are terrified of bikers because legally it’s always the fault of the driver if there’s a bike/car accident. Now that it’s spring and weather is nice, I’ve been riding a lot. I took all of these pictures in the last two weeks.

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In Copenhagen, there’s no shortage of old buildings, but you don’t have to go far to find new ones. On Amager, the island south of Copenhagen, there’s a building boom in progress, and every building is new. The area being developed is called Ørestad. The developers are marketing the central region as “Ørestad City.” There’s even an English version of the Ørestad website.

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A Danish rite of passage occurs when a child gives up their pacifier. All their pacifiers are gathered, and the family makes a trip to a pacifier tree. The pacifiers, and sometimes bottles as well, are left on the tree. Often notes are left as well, that explain that the child no longer needs these comforting items because he or she is older now.

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For Christmas I got a new digital SLR. My last one came out in 1999, and it’s mind-boggling how far things have progressed. The new camera is lighter, smaller, has a far superior screen, and vastly improved battery life. Furthermore, the new one costs one tenth of what the previous one did ($599 vs. $5,500). There are more pictures here.

It didn’t seem to be big news for the world media, but Copenhagen has had rioting all over the city, including in my neighborhood. At the time, my brother Diego was visiting. We had no idea that rioting had been breaking out all over the city for twelve hours at this point, but at about 9:00 pm he came into the apartment and told me about a fire across the canal.

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