DENMARK: PASSING THROUGH COPENHAGEN

June 18, 2019

As noted earlier, there are only two ways to fly into or out of Greenland: via Iceland (Reykjavik) or Denmark (Copenhagen). As we had entered via Iceland, we decided to exit via Denmark. We had a direct, uneventful 4 1/2 hour flight that included a 4-hour time change:

When we arrived, everyone's bags came out but ours. We waited and waited, and finally sent the rest of the group to catch the shuttle to the hotel. Just as we started to head towards the missing baggage reporting station, our luggage rolled down the ramp. We grabbed our suitcases and were able to catch up with the group.

When we got to our hotel, the Marriott Bella Sky, we learned that the regular rooms were all gone, so they gave us upgraded rooms. We had a little more space, including a seating area, but everything still had very minimalist, monochromatic Danish design:

On our way to the hotel I got an IG message from a good friend from my home city who was also traveling. She said they were in the same hotel we were in.  What are the chances of that? We were 5,600 miles from home in a city with hundreds of hotels and yet found ourselves in the same city in the same hotel on the same night. It was a truly cosmic experience. We met up later in the hotel lobby for a photo:

After a good night's sleep, the ten of us walked to the metro station just a few blocks from our hotel. We got a good look at the architecture of the Marriott Bella Sky for the first time. It is pretty funky:

Somehow, someone in our group figured out how to buy ten metro tickets using only Danish instructions, and then someone figured out how to get to our stop. With just a single day in Copenhagen, we had decided to use a local tour guide to maximize our experience. We met up with her at a downtown bakery next to this American icon. (Why aren't our 7-Elevens in such gorgeous buildings?)

Our guide was a 51-year-old Israeli woman who had been living in Denmark for eleven years and had been guiding for two. She knew the city well and was full of good information, but she struggled a bit with the large size of our group and was often hard to hear.

For must of us, this wasn't our first time in the Danish capital. Bob and I had been there eight years earlier, and I blogged about it then. Bob isn't big on re-visiting places we've already been, but for me there are two kinds of travel: the excitement of exploring new places and the sense of familiarity I feel when I return to a loved place. Sometimes familiarity is wonderful.

Our day-long tour had four parts: a cruise of the canals and harbor, a walking tour that included the Thorvaldsen Museum and Our Lady Church, lunch, and a bike tour of the city.

We started off towards the canals. Copenhagen is a great city for walking, as are most of the European capitals. There are lots of pedestrian streets, and there are always plenty of ogle-worthy sites:

Metallic bars on the pavement help the vision-impaired stay on track:

I wish there were one of these in my California city:

Now THIS is a little creepy.  This grouping of bronze sculptures submerged in the canal is called Agnete and the Merman. It is a merman and his seven sons begging Agnete (their mother?) to come home: 

PART I: CANAL CRUISE

We boarded an open flat-bed boat and started our cruise, narrated by a woman with flawless English:

Hey! It's the Ugly Duckling(s)!

There are a lot of houseboats on the water:

Not all of them are very attractive, however. We passed by the slum part of the canals, the equivalent of a homeless encampment on the water:

Here's a much fancier boat:

Who knew that there is a replica of Michelangelo's David on the pier in Copenhagen?

This city has some pretty unique spires:

 

We got a nice view of Frederik's Church, which we would visit later in the day:

It was fun to see the Little Mermaid statue from behind. I felt a bit sad for her with all those people gawking at her. Can't they see she is unhappy?

This is the Black Diamond Building, a modern extension of the Royal Danish Library:

There is a lot of interesting architecture on the waterfront:

PART II: WALKING TOUR

After we disembarked, we bypassed this taxi station . . .

. . . and made our way to the 17th century Church of Holmen, or Royal Naval Church, the site of the marriage of the current Queen of Denmark, Margrethe II to Prince Henrik in 1967:

 Check out the detailed woodcarving:

My favorite part of the church is what looks like the baptismal font:

This painting is stunning:

The tomb of  . . . ? Perhaps previous monarchs:

Our next stop was the Thorvaldsen Museum. Nothing screams "Art Museum!" like paintings such as these on the outside walls, right?

Everything in the museum is either by the Danish neoclassic sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844), or was part of his eclectic art collection. This bust of Thorvaldsen was carved by Christian Daniel Rauch:

Thorvaldsen had quite a collection. He must have been very wealthy:

This room, filled with sheet-draped statuary, looked like a horror movie set:

That sword piercing the white sheet is a little creepy:

Thorvaldsen did lots of sculptures of historical figures. Two of my favorites are the Polish mathematician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) and the German poet, philosopher, and dramatist Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805):

Models for bronzes by Thorvaldsen included Napoleon Bonaparte and the Emperor Maximilian I :

. . . as well as Sir Walter Scott and a self-portrait:

Even Lord Byron can be found here:

Thorvaldsen is perhaps most famous for a commission of thirteen sculptures that he carved from Carrara marble: the resurrected Christ and his twelve apostles. It took him 19 years to complete the commission. The models of these statues are in the Thorvaldsen Museum, and the final carvings are in the Church of Our Lady not far away.  These are the models of six of the twelve apostle statues:

The Christus model is here as well. The angel in the foreground is another sculpture that is in the Church of Our Lady. When we were in this room, a group of school kids were sketching the sculptures. Also, did you notice the hideous carpet and the overlapping rugs?

The finished carving, which stands 11.3 feet tall, has a much different setting in the Church of Our Lady:

As I have already posted on the Church of Our Lady and the sculptures of Christ and the apostles after our last trip to Copenhagen, I'll just post my two favorites of the apostle sculptures: Peter, who has a firm hold on the keys of Christ's church, and Andrew, holding his x-shaped cross:

Back in the Thorvaldsen Museum, we took this picture of the ten of us and our guide in front of another of the sculptor's monumental works:

Just outside the museum is Greyfriar's Square, surrounded by colorful 18th century buildings:

We kept walking through the magical side streets. . . 

. . . right past some intriguing shopping:

. . . and past some not-so-exciting dining options:

Copenhagen is a interesting mixture of old and new:

We finally went inside when we got to the Copenhagen City Hall:

City Hall houses Jens Olsen's amazing astronomical world clock, which is supposed to calculate time all over the world AND the positions of all kinds of celestial bodies with exact precision. One of the clock's gears makes a complete rotation every 25,753 years. Here is the front view:

Supposedly this is one of the most accurate mechanical clocks in the world. Jens started building the clock in 1943, but died in 1945 before it was finished. Others took over the work, and the clock was finally unveiled in 1955. It has 15,448 working parts, and theoretically will run forever if it is wound once a week. Ironically, it was not working at all the day we were there. The time was wrong and nothing appeared to be moving. It must have been undergoing some kind of maintenance. The back view:

Onward. Everywhere you look, there is something interesting to see:

This is the Fountain of Charity, located in Old Square, where it has impeded traffic since the 1600s. The pregnant, bare-chested woman is squirting water from her breasts and the baby she is holding is peeing into the fountain. No wonder they are up so high where it's hard to get a good look at them.

We passed by the University of Copenhagen, marked by this bust of Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist who won the Nobel Prize in 1922 for his contributions to our understanding of the atom and quantum theory. Not far from Bohr is Moses holding the stone tablet on which the Ten Commandments are engraved.  It's an interesting pairing, don't you think?

 

PART III. LUNCH

We'd been on our feet all morning, and it was definitely time to get some rest and nourishment. Our guide took us to Paludan Cafe, and unique combination of library, bookstore, and restaurant:

The food was beautiful AND delicious:

. . . and the ambiance was fantastic:

After our tummies were filled . . .

. . . we went downstairs to the used book department to browse for a few minutes before heading off to the final adventure of the day.

PART IV: BICYCLE TOUR

As we have traveled around Europe, I have looked with envy at that thousands of people pedaling along on bicycles. Amsterdam is probably the European city with the most cyclists, but Copenhagen can't be too far behind. I was thrilled to finally get the opportunity:

We were all fitted for bikes . . .

. . . but they had none that were small enough for the most petite of our group, so they borrowed this contraption from another shop.  Laura was a very good sport (as was her chauffeur husband), but eventually it became extremely uncomfortable as she got thrown around the box and bumped up and down on the metal bench. The cobblestones were the worst, and there are a lot of cobblestones in Copenhagen.

Our guide took off at a fairly fast pace, advising us to follow her "like ducklings," but it was hard to stay together. There were just too many of us.

Illustration from Duck on a Bike, a children's
book by David Shannon.  Photo from here.

We were reunited in the beautiful Rosenberg Castle Gardens:

. . . where we stopped to pay homage to the world's greatest storyteller, Hans Christian Anderson:

It is a very good likeness:

We pedaled through some interesting neighborhoods (I'm always a sucker for murals):

. . . but these cobblestones were starting to get to Laura as she bounced around in her little metal cart:

We joined the paparazzi (three bus-loads of tourists) gawking at the poor Little Mermaid (from land this time):

We stopped to admire the Gefion Fountain, which depicts the Norse goddess Gefjon driving a herd of animals before her. This fountain was donated to the city by the Carlsberg Co., a worldwide brewery headquartered in Copenhagen, in 1908:

I love this photo of our friends:

We rode our bikes into an octagonal cobblestone courtyard made by four identical palaces facing inward. Collectively, they are known as Amalienborg Palace, and for the last few centuries, various Danish monarchs have made one or more of the palaces their home. The current queen lives in one of these, and I suppose the crown prince or princess must live in another, with various family members occupying the remaining two. It's quite a handy arrangement, don't you think?

Our guide had planned for us to arrive in time for the changing of the royal guard:

First, they had to have a stare-down to see who would blink first, or maybe they were having a friendly little discussion. ("Is your head hot? I'm dying." "These long pants and hot shirts and gloves aren't a picnic either.")

And then they started marching around, kind of like toy soldiers.  I wonder if there are any women among them, or is this just a guy thing?

We also paid our respects to Frederik V, King of Denmark from 1746 - 1766:

Moving on, we spent a few minutes in Frederik's Church. The cornerstone was laid in 1749 by the equestrian king depicted above, but the church was left incomplete for almost 150 years. It was finally completed in 1894. It has the largest church dome in Scandinavia, measuring over 100 feet wide and resting on twelve pillars.

My favorite part of the church is this stained glass window in one of the side domes:

I also love the richly-colored altar and the extravagantly ornamented organ (especially those two swans peering over the cherub's shoulder):

The stations of the cross are also especially beautiful:

We were hot and tired when we fortuitously happened upon this ice cream shop:

After some R & R, we hopped back on the bikes and continued on. The photo on the left is an iconic shot of Copenhagen's canals and colorful architecture, and the photo on the right is of yet another bridge being destroyed by Locks of Love, placed there by lovesick teenagers who are sure they'll be together forever. I sure hope this tradition doesn't find its way to the U.S.:

Here are five couples who know what it's like to stick it out with each other without defacing a bridge:

The cycling was by far my favorite part of the day, a wish fulfilled. However, we had to cut it short to give our poor friend in the cart some relief. Here we all are with our guide at the end of the day:

Leave it to the guys to goof off with the "equipment":

Well, it was time to break up our happy group. We were all going different directions for the final phase of our trip. Some of the couples went back to the hotel to grab their stuff and head to the airport, but Bob and I had time for dinner at an outdoor cafe before heading back to the hotel:

Dinner was okay, but I would have loved a bowl of this stuff:

We took the hotel shuttle to the airport, and after we dropped off our bags, I noticed a cute family scurrying through the crowd. One of the kids was holding a "Welcome Home" sign, which was my first clue. When I saw the dad bringing up the rear with a "Return with Honor" sign, I knew why they were there. I told Bob I had to talk to them. I approached the father, and he said Yes! They were picking up their missionary! and then referred me to his wife, who spoke better English than he did. Their daughter had served in the Peru Lima North mission. They lived in Sweden, but had traveled to Poland for dental work (much cheaper there, they said), and so were picking up their daughter in Copenhagen.  It didn't make sense to me, but that's what they said. There were two teenage brothers and a little sister and an aunt in their group. They seemed thrilled to talk to me. They were Central or South American--I didn't ask--but they were Spanish speaking.

Later, as Bob and I watched, the daughter came up the ramp and the mom broke loose and ran to meet her, enveloping her in a teary hug. I too had tears running down my cheeks and had to turn away to pull myself together. All the love and joy in that hug was so beautiful. We mothers pour our whole souls into our love for our children.

We boarded the plane and then sat on the tarmac for over an hour. There had been/was a lightning storm that had planes backed up. We didn't get into Gdansk (Poland was our next destination) until after 1:00 AM, and then our luggage (everyone's luggage) took almost 45 minutes to appear. It was 2:15 AM when we got to our hotel.

But we were in POLAND!