Castle-hopping with our first visitors
I headed to the park at
Frederiksberg with our very visit Copenhagen visitors in tow (my cousin
Matt and his wife Deb). The tame
herons were busy nesting in the trees, but we still saw some
interesting birdlife - two European coot chicks waiting for some food
to arrive.
Deb helped demystify the pacifier tree for me -
apparently this is where families bring pacifiers when the kid is ready
to give them up... but I still think it's pretty bizarre.
Here we're strolling along
"Stroget", the main pedestrian shopping street in Copenhagen.
Classic Copenhagen - Nyhavn
is a little canal flanked by colorful buildings with pricey
refreshments.
For a change of pace, we took
this bus (which happened to be a boat) over to the opera house (top
left), then walked to Christiana.
On May Day we did the castle
thing, starting with Frederiksborg Slot. Note the crested grebe
(bird) in the foreground.
In this case the moat is
natural - the castle is built on an island in the lake.
In this painting, a young
child of the nobility shows his early inclinations toward shooting and
male-pattern baldness.
The grand hall - where every
Sunday the king would invite all peasants who cared to show up for a
free banquet - just kidding.
Our second and final castle
of the day was Kronborg ("Hamlet's castle", in the background), just
across the channel from Sweden. Here people get around by
horse-cart, bicycle, automobile, foot, and train (tracks on the
right).
Inside Kronborg, the royal
chambers had been supplemented with modern art, of which the odd little
elf on the left here was a relatively tame example.
Walking underneath the
castle - dark dungeons and such. This guy's name is Ogier, and
he's supposed to wake up when Denmark's in trouble. There's no
record of him joining in against the Nazis, so I guess he's a heavy
sleeper.