Day 2 - Palaces, Castles, and a Torrential Downpour in Copenhagen

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Today is our second day in Copenhagen, and it was expected to be demanding. Unfortunately, the weather for late in the afternoon is not looking good and our evening excursion may be canceled. After a great night’s sleep, my body clock seems to be back on schedule and after a great breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, pineapple chunks, orange juice, and coffee, we were ready to hit the road at 8:00AM. Jody also slept well, and other than a little extra chattiness, is also getting back to normal.

The plan this morning is to meet up with our local tour expert and do a combined walking and bus tour of Copenhagen. Benedikta is a native of Copenhagen and seemed to know everything that was possible to know about her hometown. After driving through some of the more famous streets narrating some of Copenhagen’s history and highlights, we made our first stop at Frederiksstaden, home of the Amalienborg Palace. It’s called the Amalienborg Palace, but it’s actually four identical palace facades built on the four sides of a square. Originally completed in 1760, the first is the Queen’s palace where the current queen of Denmark, Queen Margrethe II lives since she began her reign in 1972. Next door is the home of Prince Christian, her son, along with his wife and family. The third palace Benedikta called the “Party Palace” as it is primarily used as an entertainment space. And the final palace is open to the public and mainly functions as a museum. In the center of the square is a statue of King Frederik V riding a horse which was completed at about the same time.

There is also a church, of course, associated with Frederiksstaden which originally began construction in the mid 1700’s, but was not completed until 1874. Technically the name of the church is Frederick’s Church, but locally it is known as the Marble Church. The church is an Evangelical Lutheran church as are most of the churches in Denmark. Early Denmark mostly believed in a series of Viking gods until it was founded in 900 AD, at which time King Frederick converted to Catholicism, along with most of the country. However, during the Protestant Reform in the mid-sixteenth century, the Catholics were asked to leave, and the Evangelical Lutherans took over. Rather than kill off the Catholics, they just took over all the Catholic church buildings and converted them all, along with their parishioners, to Evangelical Lutheran.

All of our visit was confined to the outside of the buildings, but we were able to see members of the Royal Guard, in their huge black bearskin hats, patrolling the grounds of the palaces. They looked pretty cool, but marched back and forth with their arms crossed, somehow in keeping with the overall laid-back Danish attitude. From Frederiksstaden, Benedikta took us to Ste Anne’s Square where there is a bust of FDR, thanking America for its role in WWII. While occupied by the Nazi’s in WWII, Denmark was never bombed which is why most of the original buildings from the 1600’s and earlier are still standing and in everyday use today.

After taking a bunch of pictures, we got back on the bus for a few more stops, the first being the Gefion Fountain which is an awesome fountain featuring Gefion driving 4 bulls. The story is that the mythical goddess Gefion was promised as much land has she could plow in a day and a night, so she turned her 4 sons into bulls and they plowed all the land that is now Zealand, the island of Denmark where Copenhagen is located. Designed by Danish artist Anders Bundgaard, and donated to Copenhagen by Carlsberg in 1908, it is still impressive today. Next to the fountain is a replica of St Albans Church in England along with a park featuring the bust of Churchill.

No trip to Copenhagen would be complete without a visit to the Little Mermaid. Located on a rock in the harbor, visitors can walk right up and touch the sculpture, and I was able to get a picture of Jody standing right in front of her. Benedikta told us the true fairytale of the Little Mermaid, nothing as charming as the Disney version. Evidently, the little mermaid was in love with the prince, but since she was a mermaid, there was no way for him to fall in love and marry her. The evil witch promised her she could cut the little mermaids tail and turn them into human legs, but the result would be that for the rest of her life she would feel like she was walking on swords whenever she walked. But she really loved the prince and was willing to endure a life of pain to marry him. In addition, the evil witch, being evil, also wanted the little mermaid’s beautiful singing voice for her own. Reluctantly the little mermaid agreed, and the evil witch took the little mermaids voice. But without her voice, there was no way for the little mermaid to tell the prince that she loved him, so he fell in love and married someone else and the little mermaid lived her remaining life alone. So much for the happy ending!

Our final stop in the city tour of Copenhagen was in Stroget, the center of the pedestrian shopping district. This is a large section of high end shops centered around a square in old Copenhagen. We were given an hour and a half of free time to wander around and check out the shops and grab some lunch. For lunch Benedikta recommended a local favorite, the Danish Hotdog from the local hotdog stand in the center of the square.

The Danish Hotdog is a natural casing pork hotdog, or red hotdog if you prefer with ketchup, mustard, remoulade, fried onions, and pickles. Since Jody and I both love hotdogs, we had to try them. And while they were no Elliot’s hotdog from Lowell, MA they were pretty good! Washed down with a Coke Zero, we were ready to tackle the shopping adventure. In reality, most of the shops were the same as we would find in Orlando at the Florida Mall, Outlet Mall, or Millenia Mall and we weren’t very impressed. Both of us prefer to find local artisans or local shops that sell things we could never find in the States.

In the end we found a couple of souvenir shops and bought a couple of t-shirts and a magnet and got out of there cheaply. By now it was noon and we were ready to get back on the bus for our afternoon castle adventure. First stop was the Queen’s Summer residence in North Zealand, but along the way we were able to check out some of the high end beachfront properties. Most of Denmark is close to the ocean somewhere nearby. This stretch was along the Baltic Sea and the houses were impressive worth sometimes many millions of dollars. The beach was itself visible from the bus, and many hardy Danes were escaping the summer heat and cooling themselves in the ocean. The air temperature was about 75 degrees and water temperature was probably in the 50’s or maybe in the low 60’s. Much too cold for us Floridians who wont even entertain entering the water until the water temp hits 80!

The one thing we did find interesting though is that they are still using thatched roofs. Evidently the look of thatched roofs is considered traditional, and in reality they are about as durable as other forms of construction as they can last 40 to 60 years if properly maintained. The only real issue is that they sometimes get infected with mold that will destroy the roof and is difficult to remove. We also notice a lot of black roofs as evidently in a country as cold as Denmark, they prefer the roof to attract heat rather than repel heat as we do in Florida.

The Queen’s summer home wasn’t particularly impressive from the outside, but since she actually lives there, we weren’t allowed inside. It’s supposed to be really nice inside, so we took our pictures and headed back to the bus. There were also some of the same Royal Guard present as the Queen was in residence, but this time they were not required to wear the bearskin hat and the Queen allowed them to wear a smaller cloth cap since Denmark has been suffering from a brutal summer heatwave of temperatures in the upper 70’s at times going above 80 degrees! Also with the smaller cloth cap we were able to tell that some of the Royal Guard are actually women!

From the Queen’s summer home we boarded back on the bus to head for a real Danish castle at Frederiksborg. The Frederiksborg Castle is a traditional 16^th century castle enlarged over the years and fabulously decorated. Unfortunately, there was a large fire in 1859 that destroyed most of the internal features leaving only the external shell. Luckily there was extensive documentation of the interior of the castle and in 1860 the restoration began. In only 4 years, the restoration was completed, and the internal furnishings were either reconstructed or replaced with donations from other castles of the period. The results are spectacular!

We are able to wander through much of restoration, and while we were in the church, an organist happened to be practicing so we were entertained with an impromptu concert. The church is beautiful with silver, ebony, and ivory throughout the altar and baptismal. The church is also available free for weddings for local residents.

There were several staff members of the castle who were dressed with period correct costumes to show what the residents may have looked like. As today is the first day of summer vacation for the school children, There were also a series of replica children’s dresses and costumes and mirrors where the visiting children can put on one of the costumes to see what they would look like dressed in these costumes. Can’t quite see that being offered in the States!

The castle visit was great, and we made a little stop at the castle gift shop, but it was mostly books and educational materials, so we settled for a magnet and headed back to the bus. The sky was beginning to look ominous, and the first few drops of rain appeared just as we were getting in the bus. As we headed back to the hotel, the sky just opened up and it began to rain buckets. Because of the rain, the usual rush hour traffic was even worse. It’s not that the cars slow down due to visibility, but since the storm was forecasted, many commuters who would normally commute by bicycle, today took there cars so there were substantially more cars on the road.

On the way back to the hotel, Benedikta gave us a talk about what it is like to live in Denmark. The taxes are incredibly high, typically about 50%, with higher amounts for high wage earners. But it does include a large social safety net and health insurance and the wages are substantially higher. Typical teacher, nurse, police salaries are in the neighborhood of 65k to 70k in US Dollars and the minimum wage is $15. So by the time they take out the taxes, salaries are similar to the US. To reduce traffic and encourage bicycle riding the tax on cars is ludicrous. There is a 150% tax on the price of a new car, and there is a road use tax based on the weight to encourage smaller cars. About half of Danes own their own home and about a half rent. People ride their bicycles, even in the dead of winter and the city makes sure that the bicycle lanes are clear of snow and ice quickly. But the Denmark has one of the happiest populations on earth. The taxes are crazy high, but they typically work a 37 hour week and have a pretty high standard of living.

But the one part of Danish life I could never get used to is the cold and the darkness. Denmark is close to the Arctic Circle and it is crazy cold in the winter. And because of the latitude, it currently gets dark at about 11:00PM and light again at about 2:00AM which is not too bad, but in the winter it gets dark at about 3:30PM and doesn’t get light again until after 9:00AM. I don’t think I could handle all that darkness!

The rain did end up causing the cancellation of our evening tour. We were supposed to visit Amager Bakke, or CopenHill which is an environmental project that burns all the city trash to produce energy with very little emissions. The building itself is unusual and that it is build on a slant so that the top of the building includes a ski slope. Jody and I had both seen a documentary on this facility, and were looking forward to checking it out. For dinner, we were supposed to be dining with the locals at some famed environmentally friendly series of restaurants.

Instead, we were left on our own to forage for food this evening. Our original plan was to check out the Thai restaurant in the hotel, but there was a sign on the door that it would be closed for the next 6 weeks as it was school summer vacation and evidently the owner wanted to spend his summer with his children rather than working. Go figure! We checked out the other hotel restaurant and the menu was very limited and a hamburger was $32. I expected dinner to be expensive, but we wanted someplace nicer. We checked with Maja, and she suggested an Italian restaurant called Il Buca within an easy walk of the hotel. The rain had subsided, and we had a plan!

I checked out the location on the map, and my phone guided our way. Il Buca was a VERY local place. I didn’t see any tourists, and Jody was wearing a sweatshirt from Germany so the hostess asked Jody something in German assuming she spoke it. We laughed and she quickly changed to English as everyone seems to speak many languages. The restaurant is organic and gourmet which means expensive and small portions, but we also wanted the experience, and it was great! The host and server treated us well and Jody had Pork Ragu and I had Cow Rib Tortolini. Of course we also had bread and oil, some romaine leaves on ice with some sort of dipping sauce, and some mixed vegetables in olive oil.

The bread was obviously homemade and awesome! The romaine leaves and veggies were also great, and when the girl brought out the pasta, she explained how they made the homemade pasta, and for mine, they explained that the cow that was used was a dairy cow that was too old t produce milk that was slaughtered and the beef used to make my tortolini and that had I ordered the beef ribs, they would have come from the same cow and that the beef had been aged for 117 days. A little too much information for me, but she was enthusiastic and the food was delicious. Jody also was able to drink all the sparkling water she wanted so she couldn’t be any happier. It was a great experience and ended up being about $100, about what we expected.

Tonight is our last night in Denmark as tomorrow we leave for Sweden. First stop, the Volvo factory for an optional tour. I was concerned that I was the only car guy looking forward to this tour as there is a minimum participation of 10 people, but Maja did a head count, and we easily exceeded the 10 people, so tomorrow I find out who my fellow car guys or gals are on this tour!

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