Copenhagen

While waiting in the Charles de Gaulle airpot for our flight to Copenhagen, Becky talked Helen into playing the piano near our gate.  Helen played the 2nd movement of a sonatina by Clementi.

We arrived in Copenhagen on a Saturday and settled into our apartment.  On Sunday we walked to church.  We crossed a stream where swans were swimming with some ducks.  Of course we thought of Hans Christian Andersen's famous fairytale, "The Ugly Duckling."  Hans Christian Andersen is a beloved Danish author.

Here's the church.  We were warmly welcomed.  Many of the Danes had visited the US and some had family living in the US.  A Sunday School teacher served his mission in Boise, Idaho in the 1990s.  Other than hearing Danish, we could have been attending church back home.  Everything seemed very familiar.

After church we went on a walking tour of the main attractions in Copenhagen.  This man was playing music on water filled bottles.

Our first stop was Vor Frue Kirke.  On the outside this church looks rather plain.  It is the church Queen Margrethe II attends.

The inside of the church is beautiful-- a simple setting for magnificent sculptures by Berthold Thorvaldsen.

Thorvaldsen, a Danish artist, sculpted the Christus.  The original statue is in Vor Frue Kirke.  Even before he finished his marble version, copies of his plaster model were made and placed in Lutheran churches around Denmark.  In 1950, the Mormon church commissioned a copy for an exhibit at the world's fair.  After the fair, the copy was moved to temple square in Salt Lake City.  It is beloved by Mormons and many other replicas are found at visitors' centers around the world.  The base of the statue says "Kommer til mig" which means "Come unto me" in Danish.

Thorvaldsen also carved the 12 apostles which line the chapel, 6 on each side leading up to the altar.  He sculpted Paul to replace Judas Iscariot of the original 12 apostles.  This is the statue of Peter, holding keys to represent his priesthood authority.

A small museum upstairs explained who the apostles were and gave a brief history of Vor Frue Kirke.  Helen put a sticker on a map to show we were from Oregon.

There was a dress up area for kids.

Beneath the church was a display of ruins from the church.  The original Vor Frue Kirke was built in the 1100s.  It burned twice.  This version was built in 1820.

An angel, also carved by Thorvaldsen, kneels in front of the altar. 

Just before we left, the organist came in to warm up before the 5 pm service.

A short walk from the church is the Round Tower.  It was built in the 1600s by Christian IV and is part of Copenhagen's university.  It is an astronomical observatory and is still used in the winter time. We guessed that it isn't used in the summer time because the nights are too short to make it worth the time to get out a telescope.

Here is the view of Copenhagen from the top of the Round Tower.  Vor Frue Kirke is to the left of Helen's head.  The British fire bombed Copenhagen in 1807 and burned ⅔ of the city (including Vor Frue Kirke.)  You can see the remaining wooden houses at the base of the Round Tower where the fire stopped spreading.

Next we walked to the Botanical Gardens, a lovely public park.

This was a good place to rest and have a snack, like many other people, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

Here's a statue of Hans Christian Andersen in the park.

Next we walked to Kastellet, a small fort on Copenhagen's harbor.  It was built in the 1600s, but only used to defend the city when the British attacked in 1807.  It wasn't a very good defense.  Helen is standing on an earth embankment that surrounds the fort.

The fort is star shaped and surrounded by a moat.  This is one of the bridges crossing the moat.

Kastellet is open to tourists, but it is also used by the Danish military for exercises.   

The Little Mermaid statue is on the edge of the harbor.  This statue is known throughout the world as a symbol of Copenhagen and represents another fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen.

This statue is less well known.  It represents Gefion.  The King of Sweden promised her as much land as she could plow in one night.  Gefion turned her four sons into oxen and she plowed out a huge chunk of land.  She threw the piece of land into the sea and it became Zealand, the island on which Copenhagen is located.

Next we walked to Amalienborg Palace, home to Denmark's royal family.  They don't seem as concerned about security as the rest of the world and seem to use 18 year olds with rifles as guards.  The guards would allow photos as long as we didn't get too close.  We loved the cute heart cut outs on the sides of the guard stations.

A statue of Frederick V is in the center of the Amalienborg Palace complex.  The statue is said to have cost as much as the rest of the complex altogether.  We think they overpaid.  Interesting fact: for the past 500 years, all of the Danish kings have been named Christian or Frederick, alternating names, plus one Queen named Margarethe.

Next stop was Nyhavn, which means "New Harbor." The name is outdated since it is a canal that was dug in the 1600s.  The colorful buildings lining the canal make it one of the most picturesque streets in Copenhagen. 

Here's another view of Nyhaven.

We stopped for dinner at an Asian restaurant.  This dinner was memorable for being one of the only meals we ate inside.  Helen liked her dinner better than the photo makes it seem.

On Monday we took a train to Hillerød to tour the Fredericksborg castle.  The castle was built in the 1600s by Christian IV, the same king who built the Round Tower.

This stone lion in the courtyard looks a little crazed.

We toured three floors inside the castle.  The stairways were lined with metal shields.  We learned the shields belong to members of the Order of the Elephant.  The Order of the Elephant is Denmark's highest honor, dating back to the 1400s, but gaining prestige in the 1600s.  The king (or queen now) is the head of the order and the order only has 50 members at a time.  When a person is chosen for the order, a shield is painted to hang in Fredericksborg castle.  The person can choose the symbol and slogan that is painted along with their name.  When the person dies, their heirs must return the Order of the Elephant to Denmark.  Their shield remains at the castle.  Currently, all the members are royalty and heads of state.

This is the chapel in the castle.  Danish kings were coronated in this chapel until 1840.  After that, Denmark became a constitutional monarchy and their kings are no longer coronated.  The oldest organ in Denmark is here, above the altar.

A small room off the chapel holds the king's private altar.  It also contains Carl Bloch's paintings of Christ.  The paintings depict the life of Christ, from the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary to the resurrection.  Many of the paintings are well known to Mormons and are used in manuals and magazines as illustrations and copies hang in homes and churches.  Here is one of the paintings.  The king's altar is made of ebony, gold and silver and is protected behind plexiglass, but we felt these paintings were the real treasure in the room.

This is the king's audience chamber, built to impress visitors.  The walls were decorated with paintings of kings and of battles Denmark had won.  The ceiling had allegorical representations of the four continents: Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas.  They didn't know about Australia when the room was built.

A slimy moat surrounds the castle.  Who knows what lurks in the green water?

We took a boat tour around the castle's lake.  We got on and off the boat at the same spot, but you could also use the boat as a water taxi between the castle and the town.

We stopped for lunch at Cafe Havehuset in the castle gardens.  We loved the cute thatched cottage where the cafe was located.

The cafe offered exactly three kinds of sandwiches.  Helen and I ordered two of the choices, one with cod and one with potatoes (the third choice was smoked salmon).  Danes call this kind of open face sandwich smørrebrød.  We weren't sure what we would think of them, but we liked both of the choices.  The presentation was very pretty. 

After lunch we walked back through the garden to the castle.  This is the view of the castle from the rear.

We could see a smallish castle looking building in between 2 ponds.  We asked one of the groundskeepers what the building was and he said, "It's extravagant.  It's excessive.  It's embarrassing."  One of the Frederick's built the castle as a bathing house to go swimming.   

On our way home Monday night, we stopped to look at the Copenhagen temple.  The temple was closed, but we could walk around the small courtyard next to the temple.  The Copenhagen temple is unusual because the church converted an existing chapel into the temple.

The original chapel was built in 1931.  It was used as a bomb shelter during WWII.  The remodel retained the brick exterior and the columns of the chapel.  We think it looks like Solomon's temple.

While in Copenhagen, we stayed in the upstairs apartment of this cute house.  We were in a quiet neighborhood close to the bus stop.  The location was very good.

This apartment felt spacious after our tiny apartment in Paris.  This is a photo of Helen and Becky's room.  We loved the old fashioned pine doors.

The apartment had 2 bedrooms, a sitting room, a kitchen and a tiny bathroom.  The bathroom was so small that the shower was in the kitchen.  This is the sitting room.  A challenge of visiting Denmark in June was knowing when to go to bed because it was light outside long past bedtime.