Farewell, Copenhagen!

We met Annabelle for one last chocolate-croissant breakfast and gave her all our Danish money. I'm pretty sure that's at least a thousand dollars:



She went to class, and we found our way back to the airport:



The flight home was a breeze, but stepping outside the Dulles airport was like falling into an oven.

I'm sure that at least a few of these steps are from hiking through Dulles and around the long-term parking lot, but I'm counting them all as from Denmark:



111,397 steps for the week! If my poor feet could have taken it, I'm sure I could have walked another 111,000 and still not run out of cool things to see.

Copenhagen: Day 6

We headed off in different directions today, our last full day in Denmark, with Annabelle and me going in search of yarn and Fred just wandering around the city. We found the yarn store, but it was closed. I have a few photos, such as this geographically helpful cow:



And this picture Fred took of the Black Diamond:



Our tourist frenzy seems to have worn off, however, so there aren't many photos from today. We did cover plenty of ground though:



We have walked past the Church of Our Lady many times as we've gone from our apartment to Annabelle's and back again:





Tonight we heard a band playing on the steps and went to check it out:



A brief video clip:

We had dinner at Nova, a Mexican restaurant around the corner from Annabelle's apartment. My lovely mojito:



It's rather chilly today, but that didn't stop us from grabbing ice cream after supper:

Copenhagen: Day 5

We have really enjoyed having the church and its bells just outside our living room window:







Here's a picture of it from the other side:



And right across the street from that is Rosenborg Castle. I still can't get over the fact that I just HAPPENED to book an Airbnb within a couple blocks of a castle. We started today's wanderings there, where we saw the palace guard getting into formation for the changing of said guard at Amalienborg:



We walked down to Amalienborg for the ceremony. A few random pics:









More pictures of the Nevsky and Marble Churches, just because they're so amazing:





Annabelle took some photos of Fred and me in front of the Marble Church. She said of the bottom right one, "It portrays my mom as an actual fairy princess and my dad as confused but amused and generally cool with it."



After the guard-changing ceremony, we passed the relieved unit headed back to their barracks:



I don't think I have ever seen a Tesla before, but they are everywhere here:







Nikolaj Kunsthal, an arts center in a former church:



At Christiansborg Palace, we went underground to see the ruins of an even older palace that dates back to 1167. It was very interesting but dark, so the only photo I got was one of Annabelle prepping the rodents for one of their Instagram offerings:



We returned to La Glace for a lunch of cake and hot chocolate:





Meanwhile back in Texas, my Baby Bird is sick! Poor Mike has pneumonia and spent the day in the ER:





Feel better soon, sweetie!

Steps walked today:

Copenhagen: Day 4

This morning we met Annabelle for breakfast at one of her favorite coffeeshops. I had my usual chocolate croissant but decided to get hot chocolate instead of tea. Baresso's hot chocolate is a cup of hot milk, 3 amazing sticks of chocolate, and a bowl of whipped cream. Why isn't ALL hot chocolate like this?!





After breakfast, we set out for another day of sightseeing.

The National Museum:



The Royal Stables at Christiansbourg:







Kierkegaard:



We walked down to the Black Diamond (Royal Danish Library) and over to Nyhavn to take a boat tour of the harbor and canals.

Nyhavn:





Boat selfie:



David in Copenhagen:



Church of Our Saviour (Vor Frelsers Kirke) tower:



Librarian selfie in front of the Black Diamond (Royal Danish Library):



Denmark's bridge to nowhere:





After our boat ride as we walked to Paper Island (the loooong way around, thanks to the bridge to nowhere), I spotted this dapper maritime dog:





We finally made it though, and Street Food at Paper Island was totally worth the hike! It's an enormous collection of what would be considered food trucks if they were mobile and outside. It was rather overwhelming, but we got some drinks and shared a variety of dishes from pizza to duck BBQ.



Our walk back found us waiting our a sudden downpour in Christiania, the hippie-commune part of town. No pictures because Annabelle said she would officially disown us if we whipped out our phones and started taking pictures.

Another downpour caught us as we were near the Church of Our Savior, so even though we didn't get to climb the tower, we did get to go into the sanctuary:





The Stork Fountain, which we have walked past a couple times since we have been here:



About halfway between our apartment and Annabelle's is the Round Tower, so we have walked by it many, many times. Annabelle had a Skype meeting with a committee back in Rochester late this afternoon, so Fred and I set off on our own and decided to finally climb the tower. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that instead of stairs, it is a sloping walkway.

A peek into the church on our way up:



The view from the top is quite spectacular:











We had dinner at Restaurant Kultorvet and then met up with Annabelle and headed to Tivoli, an enchanting amusement park right in downtown Copenhagen:











One funny thing happened while we were at Tivoli. Annabelle had gone off in search of her lost youth on a playground and managed to lose the key to her apartment into some shrubbery. We anguished for a moment over whether to try to retrieve it through official channels, but finally we opted to send her over the fence in search of it. "Even if you hear people yelling you," I said, "don't come back until you have the key." Fortunately nobody yelled (or even noticed), but we felt like bad-ass criminals and laughed about it for the rest of the evening. This was the scene of our "crime."



We did some shopping at one of the nice department stores in Tivoli. I got a chuckle out of somebody's subversive merchandizing:



It's Ramadan, and we noticed as we were going into Tivoli that there was some sort of community meal being planned in the square across the street. It was in full swing when we came out:



Another banner FitBit day: