Day 5: Free Culture
Despite having been here since Sunday I finally got round to spending my second full day in København today. Having had a fairly long day yesterday (what with being on trains for over six hours all told) I treated myself to a bit of a lie-in and didn’t leave the hostel until just before ten. To start with I headed to the Nationalmusee.
This place is absolutely fantastic. It’s a fairly sizeable museum and is full of all sorts of artefacts from right back in the Stone Age all the way up to the modern day. Although it mostly deals with the history of Denmark there are also some good exhibits of general world artefacts. I managed to spend a good three and a half hours or so here and the best thing about it was, it was all free!
Is that an eskimo thong?
Although it was fairly grey and snowing quite heavily when I got up this morning, by the time I left the museum the sun had come out – though the temperature here still hasn’t reached higher than about -3°C for the most part.
I decided to make the most of this sudden break in the weather and do some more outdoor wandering/exploring. First stop was the Rundetårn from the top of which I got the following spectacular views of the city:
How can it be this sunny in December?!
København in all its glory
Another good thing about being up so high was that I was able to spot some potentially interesting-looking stuff which I hadn’t yet seen. Having picked a building to head for (and having worked out where it actually was in relation to where I was) I descended and carried on my exploring.
By chance I had managed to find Kongens Park and Rosenborg Palace (one of the royal residences, I believe). I had been meaning to visit this on Monday however, due to my guidebook being slightly cack, I hadn’t been able to find it – I think I have now established that Lonely Planet are good for off-the-beaten-track stuff yet total cock for cities and the like.
Regardless, I was here now and in fact it actually worked out quite nicely this way round as, once again, I could not have had better luck weather-wise. With the sun just starting to dip behind the buildings and a fairly fresh layer of snow on the ground it was absolutely stunning as evidenced by the following:
I’m English, I’m not used to such luck with the weather!
I was also fortunate enough to have timed it so that I was able to watch a changing of the guard at the palace, a ceremony which seemed to bear many resemblances to the one back home in good ol’ Landaan taaan! Nice to see we’re not the only ones who continue with such weird and wonderful formalities!
From here I pretty much just wandered around in whatever direction took my fancy, almost freezing my hands completely off in the process due to the fact that there is seemingly a photo-op on every single street corner in this city.
Just as I was headed back to the hostel it began to snow again, fairly heavily – I really had unbelievably good luck with the weather so far. After a quick rest it was back for another perhaps not quite so well-deserved yet at any rate quite delicious trip to Lagkagehuset – don’t judge me, I’m on holiday!
Vi ses!