København--The Rest of My Excellent Adventure

Day Two, continued!

As usual, go here for more pictures.

The Icelandic embassy is the loneliest embassy of all, located in one of the bleakest, most depressing little corners of Copenhagen near the harbor. I don't think I've ever seen such a neglected looking representative of a foreign nation before in my life. I sort of wanted to hug it.

Anyway, the reason why I ended up moseying my way past the Icelandic embassy in the first place is because my intrepid travel companions and I were in pursuit of that most elusive of structural entities, the Copenhagen opera house. Okay, so it wasn't exactly elusive: the thing looms like a giant eyesore opposite Frederiks Kirke on the other side of the canal. I thought it was pretty ugly in comparison to Oslo's opera house, which has lots of asymmetrical angles and disappears prettily into the waters of the fjord. Copenhagen's, in comparison, is... well, I just didn't like it as much. You can compare them and decide for yourselves: Copenhagen's, or Oslo's? To help your decision-making process, keep in mind that you get to enjoy this view of Oslofjorden from the top of Oslo's opera house. :D

Day Three

Day Three started with soft, gorgeous morning light, which made taking photographs nearly a tangible joy after we checked out of our hostel and set out into the city again. We only had half a day available to us for proper adventuring, but made the very best of it, to my reckoning. Our list of visited locations was rather short this time: the Round Tower and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, but as far as I'm concerned, these were easily two of the best places we could have visited, and so I'm glad they both made it onto the list.

The Round Tower itself is attached to a church that still holds regular services, but has been sectioned off so that the tramping feet of many an errant tourist don't disturb the patrons as they enjoy Sunday service, or just some quiet prayer time. (Pictured at the right isn't the Round Tower, by the way; you can see that here instead. It got a bit gloomy outside by the time we got there, unfortunately.) There's no elevator or quick way up to the top of the tower, so we hoofed it up to the very top and enjoyed one pretty darn fantastic view of the whole city spread out around us.

I came to this conclusion about Copenhagen during my short stay: there is so, so, so much to see, so many friendly complete strangers willing to chat with you about the oddest things at the most absurd moments (e.g., the ferryman who seemed perfectly happy to discuss Humbolt University in California with me, nevermind the queue of passengers waiting to board the ferry behind me)--but I wouldn't want to live there. When I think of Copenhagen, I think of a really fantastic vacation destination; having breakfast in Ny Havn was a glorious indulgence, but something I wouldn't be able to do every day. The public transit system is very large and exceedingly complicated to such a degree that most of the time, we just didn't bother with it. In contrast, I don't think I would ever recommend Oslo as a vacation destination to anyone hoping to explore the finer aspects of Scandinavia--but this is a great place to live. Just enough museums to keep life fascinating, beautiful wilderness only a ten-minute walk from my front door, and an incredibly easy to navigate public transit system that only took me a few rides to sort out. I feel comfortable in Oslo; it's home to me, even if it isn't the most exciting city in Europe.

But I'm getting ahead of myself!

The Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek had many fantastic attractions, but I gravitated towards all of the ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, their collection of which was MASSIVE and EXTRAORDINARY. Yes, the capslock abuse is absolutely necessary to aid in expressing my delirious joy. When you invariably browse through my photo galleries on Facebook, you'll discover that I took the most photos of my entire trip inside this place--mostly of nude Greek and Roman dead guys, of course. ;)

Herakles, pictured to your left, was a very popular subject of course, though I was pleased to discover several other notable names in and amongst their collection. I'm not sure what I was expecting to discover inside the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek when I decided to venture inside of it, but this collection totally blew me away by its sheer quantity of gorgeous sculptures. I nearly wept openly when I found this beautiful bust of Alexander the Great kept in almost pristine condition. Alexander the Great was one of my earliest obsessions as a history major, thanks in part to Mary Renault's historical fiction as well as her introspective analysis of his character in The Nature of Alexander. Anyway, seeing that bust had me walking on clouds for the rest of the afternoon.

But of course, all good things must come to their inevitable ends, and we did eventually have to board the bus to begin our trip home. The conclusion of our visit to Copenhagen didn't prevent me from snapping some shots of the wind turbines jutting up out of the water between Denmark and Sweden, of course.

And that, as they say, was that! :)