One of the first countries I marked was Denmark.
I've literally wanted to visit Copenhagen since I was 9. And mostly because I wanted to see this:
I was SO HAPPY about this view. I took approximately 238746 photos from different angles. Isn't it beautiful?
We left Krakow late at night and got to Copenhagen at 1-something in the morning. I should mention that Brad and I are, shall we say, not at our best at that time of day. We barely function at that time of tired. However, I wish I had a picture of a woman I saw who was functioning magnificently when we arrived: a mom who was wearing her ~8-month-old in a sling in the front and her ~2-year-old in an Ergo-type carrier on her back. She was a BOSS LADY.
We stayed in an Air BnB while we were there, and the plan for getting the apartment key was to meet the owner's friend in the airport. We kept looking around for her, but given our lack-of-functioning abilities, it took us a while. Don't worry- we found her (she found us) and got the key. We then paid A LOT for a taxi to the apartment. This was our first taste of Danish prices.
The apartment we stayed in was probably our least favorite Air BnB we've stayed it, but it wasn't too bad. The building was what I think of as SO DANISH. It was super industrial and...Scandinavian. But it got the job done.
The hallway of our building.
We got a later-ish start the next morning (later that morning) and headed to Nyhavn (pronounced: nih-hawen...roughly. Danish is hard.), the harbor area with the beautiful, colored buildings. We didn't have a really solid plan but did have a few ideas of things we wanted to do. This is a little unlike us; we usually have a pretty thorough plan. We got lunch (we both got over-priced open-faced sandwiches that were, thankfully, quite good) and decided to do an hour-long canal tour, which ended up being super helpful and orienting.
Those orange and black things are life jackets. That's a lot of life jackets.
On our tour, the guide said everything twice: once in English and once in German. And in the back of the boat was a tour group from South Korea who had a translator translating everything the Danish guide said into Korean. Crazy.
Our guide started the tour by mentioning that "Nyhavn" means "new harbor," which is ironic, as it's 350 years old. It was dug out by Swedish P.O.W.'s.
The first thing we passed was Papiroen, or Paper Island. I had read about it before we went because it's a really popular destination for eating cool, Danish street food. For a long time, this warehouse is where the Danish press kept their newspapers. Now, it has mostly been taken over by hipsters. Brad and I stopped by for dinner. More on that later.
Papiroen
Danish Opera House.
This picture isn't the easiest to decipher, but do you see those tall smokestacks in the distance? Our guide told us (and we're choosing to believe him, even though it sounds crazy) that this is the largest incinerator in Europe...and that there is an architect building ski slopes on it. The idea is that the energy from the incinerator will power the production of snow for the slopes, of which there will be 3. It sounds bogus, but who knows?
Snow slopes: cool idea or urban legend?
Hans Christian Andersen was Danish (he actually lived in Nyhavn for a while, back when it was a little disreputable and super bohemian), and the Carlsberg family (as in, Carlsberg beer) donated a statue of the Little Mermaid to Denmark after seeing and loving the ballet. Originally, we were planning to walk to the statue to see it up close, as it's one of those things one does while in Copenhagen, but we ended up not getting there. I'm not too sad about it, especially after we saw this crowd around it.
See those two big rocks stacked on top of one another in the foreground? There's a teeny tiny mermaid perched atop it. Her size is a little bit unimpressive, unfortunately. But she is "little," I guess.
This next picture is of a bridge that was also designed as a piece of interactive community art. It's a functioning bridge for bikes and pedestrians and is really neat looking in person. Speaking of bikes, biking is HUGE in Denmark. They have not only their own bike lanes but also their own traffic lights. Little kids, college students, business people, older people. Bikes are everywhere. And, it was super stressful trying to stay out of their way. I made more than one person on a bike mad by my inability to stay out of the way.
If I'm deciphering my notes correctly, this is part of the 2nd Christiansbourg palace, which was built after the first burned down. Incidentally, the 2nd Christiansbourg also burned down. The 3rd now houses parliament. I hope they have really good fire alarms installed...
The stock exchange. The spire is made up of three creatures (dragons?) whose tails are intertwined. I think they represent Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. But don't quote me.
See that scarf I'm wearing wrapped around me? That scarf was the MVP of this trip. Especially in Copenhagen where it was brisk and breezy. I didn't have a jacket, so I wrapped this around me. We'd checked the weather before going, but we didn't factor in the wind off of the water... That scarf = lifesaver.
Remember the Korean group I mentioned earlier? Apparently, they were a touring choir of Korean folk singers. At one point, our boat was passing under a bridge that the tour guide said had "excellent acoustics," and the Korean group proceeded to treat us to a folk song. It was super different and quite pretty.
When we finished our tour, we were back in Nyhavn and stopped into Vaffelbageren for waffles (one waffle that we split) and coffee. Super yum.
When we finished our waffle, we took our coffees and started off for Amalienbourg Palace, the royal residence in Denmark. Denmark still has an active monarchy; Queen Margrethe II is the current queen (although she was not in residence when we visited, the crown prince and family were! Because, as our guide pointed out, he has kids and they have school.). I thoroughly enjoyed walking around the royal residences and checking it out.
After we walked through Amalienbourg, we visited Frederiks Church, or the Marble Church. The Christian community in Denmark is primarily Lutheran, so the churches we visited while we were there were all Lutheran.
Sorry about the cars in the foreground. I couldn't get around them...
When we walked in, there was this sign in the foyer asking all who enter to do so in silence, as the church is a place of prayer. They also provided a handout with several prayers written by folks like Augustine and Kierkegaard (a local son + theologian + philosopher + father of existentialism). They were beautiful and contemplative, and we spent a while reading them and thinking about them.
View of the altar from the back of the sanctuary.
The dome. You can't tell from this picture, but the 12 apostles are painted around it.
When we walked out, we noticed another church a block down the street. It was a Russian Orthodox Church, which we guessed from the onion domes. We couldn't visit the inside, but we thought the outside was beautiful.
After we finished walking around the palace area and the churches, we set off for Papiroen and walked through this garden that was secret-ish (heavy on the "ish") and quaint. Also, don't be fooled: I was really cold. I really should have worn my jeans, guys.
We walked about a mile over to Papiroen, over a bike/pedestrian bridge, which really demonstrated to us how efficiently and thoroughly Copenhagen is laid out. Once we got to Papiroen, we immediately felt the hipster vibe. This can be a good thing: hipsters tend to create cool environments and often have good food and coffee. More often than not, though, hipster places make me roll my eyes and feel slightly out-of-place, given that I wear a more classic frame of glasses and Brad doesn't wear skinny jeans. And neither of us know obscure musicians. Papiroen was kind of one of those places. They food portions looked small and expensive, and we were going to end up eating outside in the wind...so we walked around for a few minutes and then changed our plans.
This was only a fraction of the bikes we passed. There were probably 34975 of them.
There is an interactive art exhibit of Yoko Ono's at Papiroen. There's a small forest of wishing trees, and visitors are invited to write out a wish and tie it to a tree. We participated, of course.
There were tons of these empty shipping containers that were in use, selling food and drinks.
Our backup dinner plan was maybe a little controversial, but we were happy with it. When we bought our tickets for our canal tour, they gave us a coupon book, which included one for Hard Rock Cafe. Yep. We did it. It was a better financial choice for us, and we're owning it. We did, however, order the "Danish" burger option (the Polseburger), and it was yummmmm. We split the burger and then a dessert, and it was grand. Thankfully, we'd walked a couple of miles to get there, so I didn't feel too bad about the lack of nutritional value our meal contained.
Another view of the Stock Exchange on our walk to dinner.
After dinner, we walked to the train station to exchange some money (the Danish currency is the krone, by the way), and walked past Tivoli Gardens. Tivoli is the second oldest amusement park in the world (the oldest is also in Denmark!) and is in the middle of Copenhagen. We looked into visiting Tivoli, but, as with several other things, it wasn't in the budget. I did enjoy seeing the outside of it and taking pictures, though.
On our way to the train station, we also passed this tribute to Hans Christian Andersen.
Across the street from one of the Tivoli entrances was this building, which I thought looked SO SCANDINAVIAN. Seriously.
More Tivoli.
That's one of the roller coasters. Apparently, you pay an entrance fee to the entire park, and then you pay per ride/ activity you do inside. $$$
We wrapped up our evening on the early side, as Brad was fighting a cold that he'd picked up in Poland, bless his heart. But, we had big plans for climbing a church and eating crepes the next day! (Spoiler: we did both of those things.)
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