Last Day in Denmark

Our last morning in Denmark, we decided to divide and conquer Copenhagen.  For Maggie, this meant exploring cute and interesting boutiques and finding a fabulous pair of shoes.  But for me, it meant biking around the city like a madwoman to see a few more sights.  Just being on a bike again was great, and getting to use all those bike lanes was wonderful. 

happy biker

I started by biking up the waterfront, past the remains of an old fort to see The Little Mermaid statue again.  I knew it was popular, but was still surprised by the hoards of tourists pouring out of buses and clambering on the rocks in the hopes of getting a photo with her, simultaneously getting miffed at the other tourists who had the nerve to try doing the same thing.  Leaving rather quickly, I headed up to the botanical garden and took a quick stroll through their gardens and palm house before biking back to the oldest part of town to bike/walk down the main shopping street, Strøget.

Life-sized Lego

It was fun to see some of their shops, and I ducked in a few, but my objective was near the far end:  La Glace.  Some of my favorite souvenirs are edible, and this place is the oldest Konditerei in the city.  It was hard choosing amongst all the beautiful cakes and pastries in the window, but in the end I settled up the “HC Andersen”:  lemon fromage, a pureed raspberry layer with star anise, nuts, and a decorative bit of white chocolate. Just as fabulous as it sounds, and fueled me for the rest of the trip. 

Delicious!

Around the corner from the Konditerei is Vor Frue Kirke, a church with a very plain interior aside from some beautiful sculptures by Bertel Thorvaldsen.  How good was he?  So good that he’s the only non-Italian who has a sculpture in the Vatican:  the tomb monument of Pope Pius VII (and Thorvaldsen wasn’t even Catholic).  The church  is lined with his larger-than-life statues of the twelve apostles, and a statue of Christ above the altar.  My church loves the Christus statue so much that it has replicas in its major visitor centers; in fact, I see DC’s copy every week when I’m driving home from the temple.  But it was so neat to see the original one, even if we couldn’t get close.

Christus

The other statue I wanted to see was of Peter, specifically the keys he’s holding.  I’d often heard a story involving them but it never included a visual, which always drove me nuts.  For anyone else who wondered what they look like: 

Peter with the famous keys

The other statues were equally well-executed in this classical style with symbols representing either their lives or their martyrdoms.  So Matthew had a bag of coins and he’s writing the gospels, Batholomew is holding a knife, etc.  But poor Thomas.  We’ve all had moments of doubt, but he gets to be the poster child.  His statue has him looking doubtful and holding a carpenter’s square because he could only believe what he could measure or prove. 

I didn’t think pastries alone was a good idea for lunch, so I stopped by a bakery for a sandwich…and another pastry that involved dough and cinnamon.  Then it was off to a church that’s famous for its spire: Vor Frelsers Kirke.  I’d seen it the day before in the distance, and once they told me you could climb to the top I was in.  It has stairs that spiral up to the very top on the outside of the spire, and the story goes that the architect didn’t realize until it was too late that it spiraled to the left (then associated with the devil). Whoops.  

the spire of Vor Frelsers Kirke

I was grateful for all those pastries, as it was a bit of a ride followed by climbing up 400 stairs to the top of the 90 m spire (nearly 300 feet).  You started inside the chapel, up through the belfry past the bells, then outside and up a spiral staircase for the last 150 steps that narrows to nothing at the top.  Thankfully there weren’t too many other people who wanted to squeeze all the way up there for photos; I can only imagine what it’s like on a busy day.  I generally don’t mind heights, but was grateful for the railing and could look directly down into the churchyard for too long.  But this is the view over Copenhagen: 

One of the best views of the city...if you don't mind the climb.

Back on the ground, I decided to return to Amalienborg Palace.  You could tell it was a nice day because the guards were wearing their warm-weather hats instead of the ones we’d seen our first day. 

summer hats

And I can’t prove it, but I’m fairly certain that while I was biking around the square Crown Prince Frederik drove by fairly quickly in a nice black car.  At this point I was just enjoying the ride and the beautiful, bike-able city.  On my way back to meet Maggie, I stopped at Kongens Have one last time to enjoy the rose garden.  The day before we’d seen this sign and it pretty much sums it up: 

All too soon, we bid farewell to Denmark and were aboard the train to Sweden.  It was cool to take the bridge over the sound to Sweden, and the countryside looked lovely on a sunny day as we rode up to Stockholm, eating the groceries we’d bought in Denmark.  Arriving at the train station, we collected our new Swedish Kroners (not to be confused with the unspent Danish and Norwegian kroners in our pockets) and headed to their metro.  As if to welcome me and simultaneously fulfill stereotypes, you could hear someone in our metro car was listening to “Take a Chance on Me” by ABBA.  I took it as an auspicious sign.  By the time we walked to our hotel it was getting dark and we were exhausted, but we were instantly charmed by the décor in our boutique hotel.  It had an odd layout, but I was too tired to worry about it much and we called it a night.