We’re back from a week and couple days in Denmark. We planned the trip around Han Zimmer’s current tour, which is why we chose March. And I will say, the concert was amazing. He was clearly just so pleased to be there playing music with his musical family, and sharing that with us in the audience.
Here’s the set list. What was really cool, was he got several of the original vocal performers from the soundtracks to come out on the tour, and that included Lisa Gerrard (who I follow in the group Dead Can Dance), who sang on the Gladiator soundtrack. I will freely admit to tearing up a little when the spotlight panned over to her the first time.
Here’s the souvenir haul – I went hard on yarn and jam. Also found some great wool slippers on sale, and bought another mug.
We did have a really good time, and we would go back, but definitely in warmer weather. We did save some money by being this off season. And the weather was actually further along for spring than it is at home. But on the days when it wasn’t sunny, it was still pretty wintery, and we did miss out on some outdoor activities that just weren’t ready yet. But I’d definitely say this is a good lesson that if you do have a reason to go somewhere off season, you can definitely make the most of it.
I’ll be doing some more targeted entries for certain days and places we went, but figured I’d start with a generic Copenhagen post, because we spent quite a lot of time wandering around town. It was really easy to get around – our hotel was right next to a metro stop, so we used the metro to get into town, and then wandered around for the day.
I did do a cardamom bun survey, for science. My favorite ended up being at Hart – they did a vanilla cardamom bun with just a touch of orange zest on top that was absolutely fantastic.
Here are some of the places we visited over the week or so we were there.
For day one, we started out in Kongens Nytorv square (our best metro link in most cases), and wandered through Nyhavn across the harbor to Christianshavn, and into Freetown Christiana. I hadn’t originally had Christiana on my radar, but it has one of the Dambo trolls (which will get their own post), so that added it to our itinerary. We got some excellent sandwiches there for lunch (at MyDeli) – a pork sandwich and Danish meatball sandwich that we split. We actually did most of our food adventuring for lunch. Our hotel room has a kitchenette, and we took full advantage of that for breakfasts and dinners.
We did day trips for the next two days that’ll get their own posts, so skip three days ahead, and we did the canal tour that’s part of the Copenhagen card. The card can be a really good value. It includes all your public transport, and entrance to a whole slew of attractions. And “Copenhagen” is a bit of a misnomer – it covers a wide variety of attractions in nearby towns, and the train ride to get there. It’s definitely something you want to gauge if you’ll use enough to make it worth it, but with it being off season, we knew we’d be inside more than if it were summer. And we also knew we wanted to take advantage of a couple of the day trip locations.
After the canal tour, we walked up to Rosenborg Slot, stopping at the Round Tower along the way. The Round Tower has a special exhibit celebrating the 350th anniversary of the discovery of the speed of light, so between that and the views from the top, was well worth the climb up. (I also got of kick out of the traffic light system to get up to the very top.)
The walk up to Rosenborg Slot through the King’s Garden was lovely. The springs bulbs were starting to come out, and things were definitely starting to green up, but it was also interesting to see the bones of the plants in the park. (The really love to pollard the trees. Everywhere.)
This palace is where you can see the crown jewels, in a vault in the basement. Interestingly, the current monarchs never wear them – they’re only used in their funerals now. So the current selection is a bit less than you’ll see for the British monarchs at the Tower of London. However, the historical collection is similiarly sized. I particularly enjoyed the Colt guns given to the king at the time by an envoy from the US during Abraham Lincoln’s presidency.
And last, but not least, we started our last full day trying to visit the Marble Church. Which was supposed to be open at 10:00 that day, but ended up being closed due to a private event. (The Hart branch we got my favorite cardamom bun at was across the street, so I have no regrets.) The weather had turned rainy and colder those last two days, so we did walk through the Amalienborg palace groups, through to the harbor, but then decided it was too cold to be mucking around outside, and went souviner shopping.