Copenhagan - Day 2

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Geo: 55.683, 12.5822

Todays adventure started at Rosenborg castle. The castle stands in the middle of a garden, called Castle garden, what else? The gardens were beautifully manicured, very English. The castle itself was built by King Christian IV in the early 1600's. It is a huge brick place, with great halls and turrets and more spiral staircases. Although once again, I think it was built for show more than purpose. I'm basing that on the fact the spiral stair case had wide steps and was therefore easy to climb. I think Gravensteen castle in Ghent has really scarred me. Rosenburg Castle was used by the royals for three generations before they built the ill fated Christiansborg. After the royals moved out they used Rosenburg to store all their old stuff. They have a lot of really nice stuff. It opened to the public as a museum in 1838. A majority of their treasures are the multitude of portraits on the walls. There was a lot of other cool stuff to, porcelain, silverware, thrones and silver and ivory sculptures. There was one room completely dedicated to ivory sculpture. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it pre-dated the green movement making elephant hunting a bad thing. Finally, in the last room in the basement I came across the crown jewels. Quite a nice little collection of accessories there, although to be honest I was more interested in the emerald set that hung on the wall. A beautiful tiara, necklace and earrings with 67 emeralds and over 2600 diamonds. Simple but elegant. I dare not think about how much it is worth. The whole set was put together in 1840 but some of the gems had been in the family since the early 1700's (thanks google)

After salivating over the jewels I made my way to Rundetaarn tower. This tower sits at the end of Trinitatus church. It was built in the 1600's by Christian IV. Chris really liked to build stuff, maybe that's why the country went broke. Anyway, I really liked this tower, there should be more like it. For a start, there weren't many stairs. Most of the way up the tower was a wide ramp that just rolled around an empty hollow. Which was concealed by a solid brick wall so no freaking out by looking down, win! The top of the tower used to be used as an astrologers observatory, so they made a sloping floor instead of stairs so they could roll heavy equipment up there instead of carrying it up stairs. There were two flights of stairs at the top but not to big. The last one was a spiral staircase with narrow steps but I manged it with very little drama. The platform at the top was very wide, with huge barriers, that I couldn't trip over if I tried. There was also another barrier about 4 feet further out. I felt very safe so either this is a really good tower or maybe I'm adjusting to this height thing.

The other thing I liked about the tower was there were a few things to see on the way up. There was a gallery, which used to be a library for the university, until they got to many books. Now it's used as an art gallery and a concert hall. The current exhibition is a modern art installation which is supposed to be about women "chatting" I'm glad they had that explanation or I wouldn't have had a clue what it was about. Just looked like a lot of half finished or mangled furniture to me...oh and a house of cards. A little further up was the bell loft. I didn't see any bells, it kinda looked like a storage room to me. But cool to see the rafters of the church I guess.

I made my way down Frederiksbergade, which is the longest pedestrian street in Copenhagen. It was nice to wander along and not worry about being run over by cars and pushbikes. I found a nice looking coffee shop and decided it was definitely coffee time (the hostel serves this hideous concoction which does not deserve to be put in the caffeinated beverage category so I had given it a miss this morning) I ordered my cafe latte and when it came he asked for 50 krone. It wasn't until I sat down to enjoy my coffee that I did the math. That coffee was just shy of AU$10. I took a photo for posterity. At least it came with two bikies.

After my expensive re-fuel and a call home to wish Dad a happy fathers day (I'm a good daughter sometimes) I made my way to Tivoli gardens. Tivoli is the worlds second oldest amusement park. The park opened in 1843 under rule of Christian VIII, who had been informed that when people are amusing themselves they don't worry so much about politics. I wonder what he was getting up to that he had to distract the people. Rumour has it that the park was visited in the 1940's by one Mr Walt Disney, who then went on to create the happiest place on earth, several of them in fact. The park is more of a family place, with lots of rides and parades for the kidlets. They had quite a few restaurants where the grownups can rest and enjoy some tasty beverages....I bet the happiest place on earth doesn't have booze. It was really very cute....Hooghly!

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