BBQ and Vejle

Greeting everyone!

Time for an update on our latest adventures in Denmark. Again, I swear this entire blog is not about food but I do have to start with Friday night which requires a discussion on food. :)

Joe’s building is also the same building that is home to a restaurant called Bone’s. Sounds appealing right? Many a nights we’ve seen people walk out of the restaurant with these big take away boxes and wondered how good they might be. Well this weekend we decided to give them a try! Turns out, SUPER DELICIOUS! :) So Friday night we ordered a “Family box” complete with 2 spare ribs, 2 BBQ chicken breasts, 4 orders of potatoes (1 baked potato with garlic butter and 3 orders of Pommes Frites (fries)) a big salad and some sauces. Equipped with our take away box we came back to the apartment and stated to eat. We split one of the ribs and a chicken breast and had some fries (me: potato with garlic butter) and salad. It was really good. Now for those of you New Yorkers this BBQ certainly didn’t compare to a trip to Dinosaur BBQ but it was still very tasty! (Joe and I did discuss how we could really go for some Dinosaur when we get back to the states, I guess I’ll have some before him!). We had a repeat dinner the following night which was fantastic! Easy way to get 2 nights worth of meals for not a bad price in Denmark.



So enough about food lest I make everyone crave some BBQ, on to the rest of the weekend. We had an enjoyable weekend here in Kolding. The rain finally decided it didn’t need to grace us with it’s presence anymore and the sun tried to come out though it was still pretty windy. We were extremely lazy on Saturday but decided we would make a day trip to Vejle to explore the town and visit one of the Gothic Churches and a Museum. We got up a little earlier than normal for the weekend and headed over to the train station. I packed us a picnic lunch to eat between our stops and we were off.

We got to Vejle around 11:15am. Vejle is a little bit bigger than Kolding so their main street area had more things to explore. Now being there on a Sunday none of the shops were open so we couldn’t go into any of them but we still walked around and enjoyed the scenery. We saw the classiest looking McDonald’s I’ve ever seen too!

The Sankt Nicolai Kirke was suppose to be open from 9:00-12:00; however, they were in the middle of mass so we decided to walk around for a bit. This church is Vejle’s oldest building dating back to the Mid-13th century. On the outer North wall is the skulls of 23 robbers who were beheaded and their skulls bricked into the wall. (eww). Here I was expecting little skull faces to be looking at me but there’s not much there but the holes in the wall. Joe mentioned that probably from the weather and everything the skulls wore away and all that’s left is the back (Kind of more gross than skulls looking at me!). We finally made it inside after the mass was over and were welcomed with some interesting sights. The church holds the remains of a woman that was once thought to be the Viking Queen Gunhilde. The remains were found in the Haraldskaier Bog in 1835. Upon further examination it is now estimated that this woman is much older and likely came from the Iron Age. One of my favorite features of the church was the beautiful baptismal font. The information guide told us that this font was 1100 years old! The other interesting feature of the church was a beautiful wooden plaque that listed all the church leaders from the 1500s to the present. In fact the last space has the current leaders name. I guess they might need to start another one. Despite the fact that the church was small compared to other churches in Europe it was very interesting and provided a great amount of insight to the towns history.


Our next stop was the Vejle Kunstmuseum. The Frommer’s Denmark book suggested this art museum and pointed out its to main features being a self portrait of Rembrandt and the Eckardts Sambling Collection including 2,000 prints and drawings from 1450-1800s including some of Albrecht Dürer’s works and Rembrandt’s works. So we paid our admission fee and were off. The museum wasn’t very big but had some excellent modern art pieces that Joe and I enjoyed. We got to the last room and found ourselves wondering where this Rembrandt portrait was as well as the rest of the collection. (We actually walked back through most of the museum to see if we missed it!) None of the art we saw was older than the 1900s. So I asked about the Rembrandt art and was told that this portrait was in another room that required a key and when she asked if we wanted to see if I said yes. A man took us up to a room with about 20 prints and left us to observe the Rembrandt art. He was an extremely talented man I must say! The details of his works are amazing. After enjoying the few prints available in the rooms I again turned to our book and though "where’s the rest of the collection?" I again asked the woman in the museum and we were told this collection was not on display and that the Rembrandt art was saw was the highlight. We left a little disappointed considering that was the reason why we came. As we walked around we discussed why on earth a museum would not exhibit such a wonderful and important collection. Joe pointed out that the Danes like modern art, which I fully support. I’m a big fan of Modern abstract art, but I also like the classics and that’s why we came. Overall is was a good museum but a little disappointing when it came to the reason why we decided to go.


After the museum we stopped to eat our picnic lunch and decided to search for the Munkebjerg or “Mountain” in the town. This mountain offers a moving stairway to the top and gives a great view of the Vejle fjord. We found a city map but couldn’t find any indication of this stairway so we decided to bag it and head home. It was a nice day on Sunday but very windy and we were both a little cold.

This weeks adventure will be a trip to Trapholt the art museum in Kolding. And next week we’ll be preparing for our holiday 1 trip. Copenhagen, Warsaw, Krakow, Prague and Munich here we come! I won’t be bringing my computer on that trip so you’ll all have to wait in suspense to find out about all of our adventures but I promise I’ll post things as soon as possible! :)

Love from Amanda