Best. Book Club. Ever.

Jael and I went to Copenhagen because of a book we read ages ago.  It wasn't a great classic or even a wonderful/gruesomely sad fairy tale like The Little Mermaid (Disney really did not stick to the spirit of that story).  It was a mystery story by Elizabeth Peters, set in Copenhagen and other bits of Denmark called The Copenhagen Connection.  It involves a writer with big teeth, a big nose, and a fanciful sense of style (who greatly resembles Elizabeth Peters herself) who is in pursuit of a story about the 14th/15th century queen of Denmark (and later of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), Margaret I.  In the meantime, she, her son, and her assistant run into all kinds of plots to uncover ancient treasure.  They defeat the bad guys, recover the treasure, and the kids get married.  It was a really good story.

I probably first read the book ten or fifteen years ago and I re-read it last year, when I knew for sure that I was coming to Europe, and that was when I decided for sure that I needed to see bits of Denmark.  (Jael read the book as well, five or six years ago.  She didn't reread it though.  She had "work" and "a husband" and "buying a new house" and "moving" which got in the way of her book club duties.)  The book has wonderful descriptions of the Gardens at Tivoli, the massive pedestrian market at Strøget, and the historical mystery that is Margaret I.  Also, somewhere back at the end of the 19th century, Hans Hanssen (or someone of like name) sailed to America from Copenhagen and ended up getting roped into the Schultz family tree.  Plus, I have always liked Shakespeare's Hamlet (Kenneth Branagh did a very nice, and very thorough, film of it) and so that seemed to fit awfully well.

Jael flew into Amsterdam Friday afternoon and we flew into Copenhagen on Saturday afternoon.  Originally we had planned a flight which would have gotten into Copenhagen in the morning but, when we bought the tickets, it ended up being about $100 cheaper to fly in four hours later and it also meant we didn't have to leave my apartment at 5am to make the flight, so I think we were both pretty happy with that arrangement.  Another huge benefit was that we arrived just at check-in time at the hotel which meant we could dump our back-packs and just carry the important things around town with us.  It makes quite a difference carrying that much less stuff.  

The pink line below shows our approximate flight path.  It was nice and clear when we were coming in so we saw what I am almost certain was Sweden.  I felt very cosmopolitan and very international after that.

We did some touring around Copenhagen on Saturday afternoon and evening.  Then, Sunday morning, we went to church in Copenhagen and, immediately afterwards, headed north to Helsingør (about an hour and a half by train, from Copenhagen) for the afternoon and early evening.  Monday, we spent most of the day to the west, at Roskilde (about half an hour from Copenhagen by train), then headed back to Copenhagen, ran around a bit, and then flew back to Rotterdam that evening.  It was a pretty fun trip, if somewhat colder and shorter than we had anticipated but the Danes know good food, good convenience stores, and good pastries and I figure you can't go wrong with that.