We had no real agenda today, so we pretty much made it up as we went along. We hopped on a bus, took it too far, and walked to Amalienborg Palace. Not open. So we checked out the Marble Church (Frederiks Kirke). It was designed to look like St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. It was started in 1749 and they intended to build the whole thing with marble, but ran out of funds. Construction was halted several times over lack of money, and finally the half-finished church lay in ruins for 150 years. In 1874 some rich guy finished it (in limestone, not marble) on condition that he acquired the rights to a bunch of land. It was controversial at the time, but the deal went through. Anyways, we liked the church. The guy who opened the doors was friendly and welcoming, and lo and behold, there was no counter where you had to buy your ticket to get in. Imagine that, a church that doesn't charge an entrance fee!
We went back to see if Amalienborg Palace was open yet, no luck, so we strolled up the Nyhavn Canal with its boats and old buildings and coffee shops. We see a lot of construction happening on these old buildings, I guess they need a lot more maintenance than our buildings back home.
Something else we see a lot of is bikes parked everywhere, a lot with no locks. Honour system? Just like on the trains and buses, we only sometimes get asked to see tickets once we are on board. We purchased a 3 day Copenhagen Pass which gets us into ALL the museums, and ALL the public transport. SO easy!
We ended up at Rosenborg Palace. It seems that every new Danish king built himself a palace, we don't know what was wrong with any of the existing ones. Again we walked through lots of opulent rooms and ogled the riches on display, especially the crown jewels. These are the ones that the monarchy are no longer allowed to wear, not even on their coronation day. One crown we saw is so ornate with gold and jewels, it weighs 8 pounds.
Next to the Rosenborg Palace, we took a stroll through the Botanical Garden. Very peaceful. The perfect place to take someone on a date.
Well, that only took up half our day, so we hopped on a train and went to the Karen Blixen Museum. Karen Blixen is from Out of Africa fame. We had already seen where she lived in Kenya for 17 years. The museum here in Denmark is the home where she grew up and where she returned to live out her days after being bankrupt by her failed coffee plantation. She turned her 37 acre property into a bird sanctuary by going onto the radio and asking everyone in Denmark to donate just one krone. There are 200 birdhouses that are regularly inspected, 40 species of birds nest there. She died at the age of 77 weighing about 90 pounds because of all the mercury laden medicine she had been prescribed to treat her illness. She is buried alone under a giant beech tree, what a lonely looking grave it was.
The Karen Blixen Museum was a good trip out of town, and since we were only 6 train stops away from Helsingor, we decided to make one more desperate look for Frankie's glasses. We started by asking at the 7-11 where we had purchased our Hillorod tickets, and guess what?!?! The lady behind the counter remembered us and produced the glasses for us, still in the case!!!! We had left them on her counter! Oh, so happy! God gave the miracle we had been praying for! Too bad Anton hadn't thought to check at this counter when he came all the way up here last night! When we got back on the train, we were so busy celebrating that we didn't notice we were sitting in the "Silence" area, and we got hushed by someone. Oops!
For the dinner "buffet" at the restaurant, they had choices of pasta or pasta. So the cook brought Frankie some gluten free bread and a bowl of pasta sauce, and she made sloppy joes out of it.
After dinner we once again hopped over to Tivoli for the evening. Why not? Free with the Copenhagen card. This time we didn't spent a dime (kroner?), we just walked around and watched people playing all the carnival games. We did find a few things we hadn't seen before, like the shooting (leaping?) sprays of water. We got our center spot on the bridge and watched the laser light show again. Much better tonight. Frankie could see!
Well, that wraps up our vacation and tomorrow we will be flying home. So I guess this makes this the last blog unless something unusual happens on our flight home! It was a great trip!
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