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[ edited & typed: 07-11 ]


Frederiksborg Slot: situated very picturesquely, a renaissance palace built into a lake, brick architecture and copper roofs turned green, which seems to be typical for the local architecture of that time, quite playful, but not overly so.

A beautiful chapel - church, rather, it's quite large- with intricately carved and colourfully painted and gilded wood ornaments, too playful to be oppressive; my favourite part, a free standing baroque audience chamber, white stuccoed walls, light and airy with windows on all four sides, connected to the rest of the castle by a private passageway leading over a channel in the same style.

The palace itself has served as a museum and storage for furniture & such from other palaces for quite some time, more pictures of Danish royalty and relations than I ever cared to look at; noticable - a table with a whimsically beautiful stone inlay tabletop decorated in the manner of the hellenistic 'unswept floor' mosaics, but the artist chose to add not only birds, but every kind of insect, including beetles and worms.

A formal baroque garden across the lake vis-à-vis the castle, which unfortunately was being restored at the moment and mostly closed, the rest of the park more like an English garden, very lush. This might be getting repetitive, but the sheer abundance of green here is a pleasant change from the already rather parched lawns at home. There are just so many flowers everywhere, roses in every park, scent heavy on the air, flowers in front of the private houses.


Hot, sultry day, heavy clouds in the distance, thunder rolling as I was walking along the lake back to the station...


Nationalmuseet: Very large, rushed through it in the 2.5 hrs left until closing time, with slightly more attention on Denmark's bronze age, an exhibition on the influence of the Roman Empire on Danish history and the classical antiquities department I hadn't even known about. (:: cough ::) Found a Cypriote terracotta group that might or might not show (a) Persian(s). (The harness of the horses isn't typically Persian, rather Cypriote, but at least one of the male figures rather looks like the Persian dignitaries known from Achaemenid and graeko-persian art) Other than that nothing much spectacular, a little bit of everything, but some very nice vases.

More or less ran through an extensive and presumably very interesting ethnographic collection and a thousand years of Danish history. Probably should come again, but I doubt I'll have the time. I'm already resigning myself I'll probably remain woefully ignorant of the details of Danish history...

Hot day, the air in the museum was stifling, ended up at the hotel feeling grumpy, hungry, feet aching, and generally irritable, the beautiful first half of the day already very distant.


Dragged my tired ass out again & went to the Tivoli (because apparently you got to see this), which is kind of kitsch, kind of cute and probably a lot more fun if you're not there on your own. Didn't take any rides, either, it just seemed a little pointless, alone... Getting caught in a downpour didn't really help either.

Went to Louis Tussaud's Wax Museum, mostly because it was near and the entrance was free with this Museum pass I hadn't really used enough anyway, and got scared shitless. What with the late hour, the rain and extremely high entrance fee I was practically alone, and wax figures suddenly take on a life of their own when they're in the majority, so to speak. Suddenly you no longer feel like a visitor, but an intruder, not watching, but being watched, and your subconscious mind decides to remember every horror movie you've seen or heard about, every Lovecraft story you've read... i was laughing at myself almost the moment I walked out, but the fairy tale section? Decidedly creepy at that moment, the dwarves singing their cheerful littlle song. And don't even mention the horror section. I was very glad when I finally caught up with a group of people, but as there was no one else it was pretty impossible to stick around them without seeming too obvious, so I passed through very fast...

(Objectively speaking, though I don't even think the figures were very good, some of the movie celebrities barely recognisable...)