Copenhagen

Day 17: Thursday, May 29

Morning time found us in Copenhagen, where we managed to find Dad and Aubrey again. Dad went to pick up Mom at the airport, and the other kids and I went to seek out the Tycho Brahe planetarium.

Back story: this semester I took an astronomy class where we learned about the astronomer Tycho Brahe, and one day when we had a substitute a kid announced that he had a mission call to Denmark. The substitute was really excited and said he should be sure to find the bust of Tycho Brahe in Copenhagen. Now hold on, I thought to myself. You are going to Copenhagen in a couple of months. You can find that bust.

Spoiler alert: the bust of Tycho Brahe is not at the Tycho Brahe planetarium. But stay tuned.

Once we had Mom we hemmed and hawed about what to do and finally settled on a hop-on hop-off bus tour, which was a good investment. There were several options on which tour to take but one of the drivers said I was beautiful and gave us all a discount for being beautiful so we chose that one. On the way I snapped a picture of a charming street on a canal and later bought a postcard of that exact picture, so that was pretty gratifying, like Yeah I know when I’m by a significant tourist site. On the hop-off part of the bus ride we stopped by a neat spirally church with a beautiful interior and the most ornate organ I’ve ever seen in my life. They also made a six-minute stop to The Little Mermaid statue, which is brilliant because who wants to stay there for an hour, and yet people like me do want to get a picture with the statue. Again, I’m not entirely sure why we tourists insist on taking pictures with specific statues, and yet we still do it. We made our final hop-off and found a cool round tower that used to be—you guessed it—a planetarium. Well maybe you guessed it. I probably wouldn't have.

But I bet you can guess what is at the foot of the round tower. Well, let’s just say I have a picture of me and Tycho to hang on the fridge now! Seriously, finding that statue was one of the most exciting moments of the day, but that just means that the day as a whole was really exciting.

View from the top of the Round Tower

One of the other most exciting moments of the day was finding the Church of Our Lady, wherein stands the original Christus statue that the LDS church loves as a good depiction of Christ. You can see it in the Salt Lake visitor’s center and about 13 other places around the world, but the original is in Copenhagen. That was seriously awesome. The church it stands it is beautiful, too, with statues of the apostles lining the walls. When President Kimball visited Copenhagen he saw that church and the statue of the prophet Peter holding the keys of the priesthood, he stood in front of the statue and said, “Now I hold the keys.” I am such a fan of beautiful Scandinavian churches.

Exciting moment #3 was the really super delicious kebabs and shawarma and pita and tibbouleh we had for dinner. Mmmmm. We sat on a nice little shopping street in the most pleasant weather and considered ourselves lucky to be together in such a lovely city.

We then had a lovely but exhausting walk around more of the city (including a street performer that reprised two of the songs sung by the Brussels Sprouts earlier in our trip)(Space Jam is following us) and went back to our hotel.

Day 18: Friday, May 30

Friday was Danish castle day. First, after a car rental/GPS fiasco we headed to Frederiksborg Castle and toured the really impressive national museum there. As we walked around we would claim rooms that we would live in, “this one is my room!” “but I like that room!”, etc. Our main goal in heading here was to see the room (the King’s Oratory) that holds all 23 of Carl Bloch’s original “Life of Christ” paintings, which was the coolest thing ever. We chatted with a friendly museum worker:

Us: So are these the real originals?

Him: Yes! Are you Mormons?

Yep, we Mormons really love Carl Bloch. Seriously though (I know I say that a lot but I am dead serious), Denmark might be my favorite place on this trip so far; it was so cool to see those beautiful paintings where they were meant to be. The King’s oratory is just off of this beautiful chapel within the castle, with murals of prophets along the columns and beautifully ornate architecture. Everyone else was surprised to see the paintings in this tiny little room next door and when my mom retells the story she makes it sound like we had no idea where we going, but I would like it said once and for all that I knew they were there the whole time.

After wandering through the castle and lunch (more Mediterranean food, mmmm delicious), we stopped by a cute little souvenir shop with fairly good prices; I got a pair of knitted socks to add to my collection of wearable souvenirs, and we headed to Kronberg Castle. This is the basis of the fictional Elsinore, where William Shakespeare set his famous play “Hamlet.”

So much potential for puns.

The grounds were beautiful and we wanted to go inside to tour this one as well; not to be. It was 3:30 and the place closes at 4 and they’re not allowed to give out tickets so close to closing. Pretty disappointing for us; seems like there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark. (hahahaha seriously I crack myself up). We also might have gotten a parking ticket (since we couldn’t read Danish we decided to ignore it)(what nice law-abiding citizens we are)(we haven’t gotten any angry phone calls so guess it wasn’t a ticket) and got some ice cream on the way back to Copenhagen proper.

To be, or not to be?

This time instead of going back to the hotel we headed straight to the airport to fly to Stockholm. One more Scandinavian capital to check off the list! We arrived fairly late Friday night, got a rental car, and drove to our hotel, which was comfortable.

How could I resist posing with these guys in the Copenhagen airport.

Since coming home people have asked me what my favorite place on the trip was, and I always have to answer Denmark! It was so clean and cheerful and well put-together, and the sites we saw were some of the ones at the top of my bucket list. I can’t complain about anything there, except maybe the incredible number of cyclists getting the way of driving.