Royal Copenhagen

Jael and I planned to go see the royal places in Copenhagen.  We sort of did, but not really.  It was really cold.  And then it was really cold and really rainy.  We kept planning on taking a walking tour through the Royal Copenhagen area (especially since it is really close to the Kastilette and other places where we went) but we kept putting it off until it was a little warmer, or until we were less tired, or until our socks were dry.  And it never happened.

We did see a part of what would have been on our Royal Copenhagen tour if we had taken it.  While we were waiting for a tram on Saturday (the first day we were in town), we saw Rosenborg Castle.  Rosenborg Castle is where they have the Danish Treasury and what is supposed to be a pretty good museum, as well.  When we went by, we were too late to actually go in but we did see it from the outside of the gates.  Besides the palace and the Treasury, there is a huge garden area where people can wander around and eat lunch and stuff.  If you click here, and then click on the tab that says "The Castle", you can go through a virtual tour of the different floors of the castle, with information about the history and events of the castle.

We waited, for about 20 minutes in the cold, at the little red star.  It was okay in the sunshine but the tram we needed  left from a stop that was entirely in the shade.  It was while we were here that I took this picture of Jael looking really cold.  You can see a part of the Rosenborg Gardens in the background.  On the map above, the Rosenborg Castle grounds, are circled in the big green circle.



Another thing that we didn't see was that just behind where we were standing (in the yellow diamond) was a Reformed Church.  It is actually a French Huguenot church, so that would have been fun to look at a little more closely.  This picture is from Google Maps Street-view (hey, it's not all evil).  It's awfully pretty.

Rosenborg Castle

Rosenborg Castle

The blue circle in the map above is around the Marble Church.  It is where the Queen and the royal family go to church when they are in town so that probably would have been fun to do but it would have been awkward not knowing when we were supposed to sing or stand or leave or anything.  The Marble Church is named because it was supposed to be completely covered with marble, including the outside of the dome but they ran out of money and just went with the copper dome instead.  It still is really pretty, though.  

We saw the Marble church.  Kind of.  You can just see the faint green of the dome against the faint blue of the sky, there through the trees.

If you want to see an inside view of the church, you can go here, where you can see an interactive 360 degree picture of the interior.  If you go here you can find out all about the history and construction of the church, together with "under construction" images.  If you go here you can click through pictures of the church.  And, if you click here, you can see a page about some of the famous churches of Copenhagen, including the Marble Church.  We also saw the first church that is shown on that page, the Church of our Savior.  We saw it a couple of different times but always while we were riding through town on a bus or something, so we never got a picture of it.  You can walk up to the top of the tower on that exterior stair and that really sounded awful in any case.  If we had gotten a chance to go there, my plan was to send Jael to the top with my camera so I could put up the pictures and pretend that I had gone to the top but I guess I was saved from that little deception by time constraints.

The orange hexagon is around Amalienborg Square.  The square itself is actually an octagon but they didn't have an octagon in Paint so I had to go with the hexagon.  Amalienborg Square has four different royal palaces.  The Queen and her husband live in one and the Crown Prince and his family live in another.  I don't know who exactly live in the other two.  The palaces were private residences until the former royal palace burned down and the royal family (a hundred years or so ago) eminent domain-ed them.  If you go here and click on the "Palace" tab, you can see the official site about the palace.  If you go here, you can see more about the history of each of the palaces, along with a lot of pictures of famous people who lived in them.  If you go here you can see something about the royal guards who stand guard all the time, in big fuzzy hats, like the English royal guard.  And if you go here, you can see the 360 degree view of the whole square.  Note that you can see the Marble Church in the background.

And that is the other famous super famous bit of Copenhagen that everybody who goes there sees that we did not see.  But it was really cold.  And we were awfully tired.  And our socks were wet.