Copenhagen, day 1, part 2

I left off the last post right after leaving the National Museum yesterday, headed towards the Amalienborg Palace. 

These two sites are pretty far away from each other, but I was pleased with walking across the whole main part of the city.  Walking is by far the best way to get to know a place quickly; getting lost is never so much fun as it is n a new city! 

Here are a few pictures I took along the way.

These buildings are the stable and carriage rooms of the original Christiansborg Palace, which used to be the main royal residence.  It was destroyed twice by fires in less than a hundred years - more on that next post.

The city really is lovely but there is construction everywhere.  It's been driving me nuts!

Here is a statue of Bishop Absolom, who strong armed a king into giving him a bunch of land and founded Copenhagen.  He sounds um...not very bishop-like from what I've heard.

No clue who this is but he's fun!

Note: this edifice is clearly a church.  A lying church, or one with an identity crisis.

After marching bravely through the scariest traffic areas of the city, I came to the area of the Amalienborg Palace.  Directly across the canal from it is the newish opera house.  It certainly lacks the panache of say, the Sydney Opera house, but it's still pretty cool. 

A close of view of the inside reveals that instead of the traditional chandeliers it has...disco balls?

And here we are finally at the palace!  Don't be fooled by that dome-y church in the background, it's not part of the palace complex.  Actually, it doesn't look much like a palace at all.  It's a series of four mansions, originally built for your average noble families.  The royal family appropriated it after their aforementioned other residence burned down.  Now the queen lives in one, the crown prince and his family in another, and two appear to be partial museums. 

 

Here it is seen from the canals.  It's hard to tell, but you can see a tiny flag flying above the one on the right.  Apparently that's the prince's residence, and the flag tells you he's home.

 

The royal guards, of course!  

By this time I was starting to get hungry again and picked out a place I was excited to try: for anyone not in the culinary know, the foodie world has been buzzing about the "new Nordic cuisine" for a few years now, and this was one of the less upscale places involved. And being that it was near an area I wanted to see I headed in that direction before dinner.

Now, this place is a bit hard to explain.

There is an autonomous "freetown" called Christiana within the city of Copenhagen.  It is not responsible to the city but to the state of Denmark, so therefore it has different laws and regulations.  It started out as an area covered by large military barracks, but they were moved out by 1971 and no one else was allowed to use the land.  People who lived nearby began to use it for a children's playground and some homeless also wandered into the area - I'm unclear on why, but this was done as a sort of government protest.  Naturally, hippies and artists were the ones who stayed there, and eventually the city kind of gave up and turned it over to them. 

After a rather short time the community in Christiania because mostly artists, musicians, hippies, and drug addicts (those categories often overlapping of course).  The former are still in residence, although so-called "hard drugs" have been removed from the area; the entire community seems steeped in pot culture, though, and because of its peculiar law system it's kind of unofficially allowed there.  They have their own set of "laws" even, including things like zero tolerance for any kind of violence, knives, or guns, no gang colors, collective ownership of the land and shops, its own currency, things like that.

Finally in 2004 the government began cracking down on the open and thriving hash trade in the area, so it's more secretive now - only in that they don't allow people to take pictures of the hash dealing zones.

Anyway!  I just had to visit, being that it's known for its artsy-ness, spontaneous music, and generally being laid back and hippie-like.  No cars, either.

I made my way down there and found it pretty easily, as this is the main entrance:

There are TONS of great examples of street art in this little collective.  Unfortunately I couldn't get that many pictures because lots of them are near the so called "green light zones," or the areas where they allow hash trade.  I got yelled at for taking pictures in those areas, but here is one of them.  Each of these little stands sells hash and pipes (some quite pretty) and things like that, in addition to other random stuff.

And just around the area:

This is the symbol of Christiania, and is on the "official" flag.

And as you leave at the main exit you see this:

It seems sketchy, and I'm sure many of you are doubtful of my fondness for the area.  But it's laid back, full of art and music, the people are nice and friendly, and there are lots of quirky shops and tourist sites.  I thought it was pretty awesome.

So the place I wanted to eat was nearby, almost in the middle of a park, but more importantly connected to this cool little 17th century windmill.

But it was closed! Ugh!

Unsure of what to do next I headed back towards the livelier part of the city, knowing there were some good restaurants.  I was starving by this time and getting a bit grumpy as I walked, but all of a sudden I heard and enthusiastic "Bonjour!" addressed in my direction.

I looked around, bewildered, since I don't know anyone, much less any French people, in Denmark.  It was the guy I met on the train the day before!  Talk about strange.

We chatted a bit again and I thought that chance meeting so serendipitous, being that he was in search of dinner too, I wondered if I should suggest we eat together.  I didn't, though, and we parted ways with him suggesting we might run into each other today (we didn't).  Perhaps we'll take the same plane back tomorrow?

Anyway, I found a cute little place on the water and had a lovely dinner of asparagus and baked hake with mushrooms and new potatoes.  It was a great place for tourist-and-stupid-student watching, but after a while it got quite cold so I walked home.

I left the restaurant a bit after 8pm and the sun was nearly set by the time I was close to the hotel.  I'll leave you with a view of the Tivoli Gardens entrance at dusk:

More later, or tomorrow!