Copenhagen!

The view from the stairwell at Rosenborg Palace

On Friday afternoon in Copenhagen, after figuring out how to take the train in, Jay and I went to see the Crown jewels at Rosenborg Palace and spent a little time walking around the National Gallery. At the National Gallery I saw my very first Da Vinci in person (Madonna on the Rocks). It was awe-inspiring. Nobody was doing anything like what he did at that time. I could have stared at that painting for hours, identifying all the intricacies.
We also did a quick walk through of the Botanical Gardens, which I love, but we'd had time to explore the last time we were here. 

The botanical gardens. It was a tad cloudy that day.

Spiral Staircase inside the Palm House

More Gardens

Garden selfie

Jay among...sugar cane? Bamboo?

Pretty flowers and fun with my camera

One of many amazing ivory carvings
at the treasury at Rosenborg castle

Carved amber at the treasury

The treasury also houses the Rosenborg wine which the royal family drinks once a year and for special occasions. It was kept in barrels until the 1980's when it became necessary to bottle the wine. It's a white wine from the German Rhineland. It dates from the 16th century, though it was topped up a couple of times over the next hundred years. The barrels were lost and reclaimed in the war with Sweden in 1659. The guide claims the wine tastes like dry sherry. Jay and I laughed at this and said something along the lines of "Yeah, dry sherry that's been open for 10 years." We also heard a tour guide telling his group that he heard the wine tastes terrible. But hey, tradition. This picture was taken from the official website, because I didn't have the patience to take a good low light photo.

What's that? Oh, just a brace of pistols made by Samuel Colt himself and gifted to King Frederick VII by Abraham Lincoln. No big deal.

Renee Descartes. I've seen this picture in so many books and online, that it was a little surreal to see it in person

Selfie in front of some cool art in the "Modern" section of the gallery.

After that we returned to Hans Ole and Laila and had a wonderful dinner, lots of conversation, and lots of wine.

Really. A lot of wine. Really GOOD wine.

I'm out of practice.

I adore Hans Ole and Laila's house, so we've agreed that we'll be checking back with them in three years to see if we can buy it (a joke, mom, don't freak out). We also heard about how they visited California in 1989 and happened to be in San Francisco when a little earthquake occurred. You might have heard of it. It was a fascinating story.

Saturday morning Jay and I woke up a little slow (I wonder why…) and got ourselves packed. The train station wasn't far, but Hans Ole was kind enough to give us a ride, which was a huge relief with our backpacks. We said goodbye to our wonderful hosts, got into the city, and surprised our host by getting their an hour early. We apologized profusely. She was very kind and generous about it. After we dropped our bags off we headed out and took a leisurely walk to the Copenhagen Street Food Market on Paper Island. This thing was amazing. Something like 80 different food carts, of all kinds of ethnicities and nationalities. It had been recommended on one of the "Gluten Free in Copenhagen" lists that Jay and I found and I'm so glad we went! We ended up both getting our lunch at a Thai cart and then following up with sweet potato fries. Jay was so excited about the options that he seriously considered getting one more thing, but considering how full we are, and the fact that we ended up perfectly satisfied with blueberries and a banana each for dinner, I'd say it's a good thing he didn’t.

Copenhagen Street Food. This picture doesn't really capture it, but it was a very cool place.

After that, we walked over to Christiania and into Freetown, which is just a fascinating little hippie microcosm. I think it's residents view it as a sort of Utopian experiment. It's completely walled off from the rest of the island except for a few entrances. It's also home to the famous Pusher street, where no cameras are allowed. This is because about 15 kiosks line the street, each selling variations on cannabis, all out in the open. I think there have been some crack downs lately, because a lot of the sellers were wearing masks, which made things a little creepy. And no, we did not partake, merely gawked. And tried not to inhale too deeply.

I generally avoided taking pictures in Freetown, but this one specifically said "Pictures okay" so I went for it. 

The sign welcoming you into Freetown. On the other side, as you exit, it says "Now entering the EU."

After that we headed back to the apartment to rest because we knew we wanted to stay late at Tivoli. Around 7 we headed to Tivoli (on the way we stopped to get the previously mentioned blueberries and bananas). You're allowed to bring food into Tivoli, and most of the restaurants have entrances that open up onto the street, so the food prices there are pretty reasonable, but Jay and I weren't hungry, and reasonable in Copenhagen is still pretty expensive.

Another addition to our growing collection of selfies, this time at Tivoli

The Pantomime theater

One of the Tivoli Peacocks

A rainbow showed up over the Pantomime theater while we were waiting for the show to start. I had to do some weird things with the color to make the rainbow show up here.

We had lots of fun wandering around the park and people watching. We saw a free pantomime show at the pantomime theater and I convinced Jay to go on the Star Flyer with me (and it took some convincing), which is a swing carousel that takes you 80 meters above Tivoli for an amazing view. It was getting dark, so it was hard to see recognize much of the city, but Tivoli looked amazing all lit up. The funniest part:

Jay likes having his feet on the ground. He was not enthused about this ride, but agreed because the trip to Tivoli was my birthday present from the Danes (Thank you everyone!). So we get into our little swing after waiting about 20 minutes and the ride lifts us up. I love this sort of thing, but I was still white knuckling it on the bar in front of me. We got up, spun for a minute and then the ride stopped and started to lower us. It was a short ride, but this seemed shorter than what we'd seen. So we get to the bottom and then watch the ride operator chide a couple who had been swinging their chairs so that it was dangerously close to twisting while we were 80 meters up. The ride operator was not amused. He told them off. And then we got to go AGAIN! Jay was THRILLED.

The Star Flyer

The Star Flyer again

The view was amazing, but I got super chilled, so then we had to go find somewhere warm to sit and drink tea. Once we warmed up we went to see the light show, which was absolutely stunning. I didn't know you could do such things with light and water and smoke. I didn't take pictures, because they could never have captured it, but it was well worth the entrance fee to watch. After that we hung around to see the Tivoli fireworks and then headed back to our room to sleep.

A picture of the Tivoli light show taken by a more skilled photographer than I (René Juncker). Thanks Google. Still doesn't quite do the show justice. 

Sunday morning we packed up, dropped our bags at the baggage storage center at the train station and went in search of coffee. We headed to Coffee Collective in the Torvhkmlmdhfjdmmdnf… and then got some baked goods at Naturbageriet (gluten free bakery) including an absolutely awesome gluten free carrot cake (more like a muffin).

Hand brewed coffee at Coffee Collective in Torvjmdhsh

Bubble man on the Stroget

Hoop acrobat on the Stroget. Tried to get some better action shots, but my camera apparently didn't like not being able to focus on a moving target.

The head of a giant Lego dragon at the Lego store on the Stroget. One of many impressive Lego sculptures we saw. 

We walked around some more and stopped to watch some entertainers on the main shopping street (the Stroget, except with an o with a slash through it), but Jay's knee was bothering him, A LOT, so we decided not to do any more touristy things that would require lots of walking and headed in the direction of lunch. On the way we were discussing his knee, and he was talking about how he walks, and how he thinks that hurts his knee, and we realized that he has been walking wrong, probably for a significant chunk of his life. So I started coaching Jay on walking correctly (which I was only able to do thanks to hours and hours of perfecting my step in high school marching band) and Jay found that when he stepped the "right" way, his knee didn't hurt. Any time he'd forget and slip back into his old way of walking, his knee would twinge, so I'm pretty sure we've identified the problem. Fortunately he'll have lots of opportunities to practice walking correctly over the next weeks. We got delicious sushi for lunch (who'd have thought that an archipelago nation would have good fish?), and, largely due to my own incompetence, I accidentally consumed dairy. Which meant I spent the next couple of hours, navigating a crowded city and getting to the airport, as a dopey space case that couldn't think straight. Jay did good though. He took care of me and we made it safely to the airport. The flight to Budapest went off without a hitch. More to come!