Mermaidens

Two museums that I hit that I would recommend (both free!): The National Museum and the David Collection. No pictures allowed at the David, but it was a really amazing collection of Islamic art that was mesmerizing. It made the rest of the collection of Danish and European artist look amateurish.

The National Museum was huge. Denmark has a policy that all artifacts from the past can not leave the country, so they have a wealth of artifacts reaching back to the stone age. There were well-organized rooms full of creepy peat-bog sacrifices and Viking artifacts.

Awesome Rune stones, and lovely plundered treasures abounded.

Mostly though, I just loved walking around. It's a very pretty city. There is a ton of construction to get around as they are extending the metro, but there were plenty of places to see otherwise.

The lovely old stock exchange:

The vibrant, picturesque and touristific Nyhaven.

It was mobbed, with tourist spilling out of the cafes and people getting go-cups to sit on the pier with.

Amalie Garden, next to the marble church.

You wouldn't have guessed it from all the tourist shops slinging figurines and postcards, but yes, there is a mermaid chilling out in the harbor.

Even though there were signs saying not to climb the statue, plenty of people, ahem, men, were gamely climbing the rocks so they could have their picture taken giving the bronze a nice grope, proving that tourist can be dicks all over the world.

There's no pictures allowed in Christiania, and for good reason. It's an old military base taken over by squatters and made into a community of hippies (or hippie-minded) and tourist coming to buy pot, and quite a few prudes rubbernecking and looking around nervously at the whole thing. It was really unique- there is a "pusher street" filled with hash and pot stands, all covered up with military camouflage (a joke- the government wanted the dealers to be "less visible", so they now hang out under camo canopies).

There are rules posted: Absolutely no pictures, no weapons, no biker gangs, no body armor, no fireworks, no hard drugs, no running (it creates panic), no cars and no selling of stolen goods. Cannabis is not legal in Denmark, but somewhat tolerated in this one area, and they are trying hard to have their idealistic self-governing hippie utopia. It's really a unique place. I'm sure it has the ability to scare some people off, but there was some really unique homemade architecture and art works all over the place and it's totally worth a look even if you aren't buying.

Copenhagen

One thing about Scandinavia: it is not a cheap place to travel. It makes places like Paris seem downright affordable, and New York...let me tell you about how much lunch you can get for $10 in that city. More than peanuts. Which is what it will buy you once you hit that magical Nordic border.

But you know, the benefits outweigh this added burden. It's a beautiful place, and the cities and the people are just so nice.

The other thing: summer is really the time to go. The long days, the bit of warm sun. Even in May, Denmark was not the slightly toasty warm-earth place I was hoping. The sun was out, yes. The temperature was about 50f degrees during the day, and in the 30s at night, and the wind....oh the wind! It blew quite a bit. I was red with wind-burn almost instantly.

But alas, we had a lovely time. Walking around, exploring the city of Copenhagen. The parks were beautiful and just starting to turn the startling pea-green of spring, and the cherry blossom were newly showing their pink, and the chorus of birdsong was deafening as it only can be in desperately short warmish-weather places. I'm all about experiencing the miracle of spring again and again and again this year.

It was an adventure of sorts. We booked this trip months ago as we had bought a single ticket to a beer festival there (it wasn't for me, that ticket) and suddenly, lo, the magic long weekend was upon us. Except there was an issue with a forgot passport not remembered until the terminal was under our feet (it wasn't me). Alas, the Nordic countries are part of the Schengen, which means once you are in, you can travel freely without one. Even as an American! So just a common ID was sufficient to let us breeze right through. Travel Disaster adverted!

Anyway. Copenhagen. It's clean, it's filled with more bicycles than pedestrians, Little Mermaid tchotchkes abound.

Also, I'm very fond of cities with Swans.

I headed to the Assistens Cemetery. In Danmark, they use their cemeteries respectfully as parks, with people sprawled out on the lawns next to the simple memorials, picnicking and drinking Carlsburg.

Paris is full of grand memorials to imortalize the dead, but the cemeteries here were much more demure and natural-looking.

I was there to say my peace to an old friend- the great tenor player Ben Webster.

Born in Kansas City, he died in Amsterdam, buried in his adopted home of Copenhagen. Many jazz musicians flocked to Europe as jazz was still popular there while rock took over the audiences in the USA. It seemed...lonely.

He was in good company though, as he was in a little section of other jazz musicians.

We did have a fantastic dinner at Manfred's. I can not recommend it enough.

We got a chef's tasting menu and had several really interesting dishes with creative uses of root vegetables.

And off to Mikkeler for a nightcap...

Delft

These pictures are a few years old, but being on a Netherlands kick that I am, I realized I had never shared them and I dug them up.

There's lots of great little villages in the Netherlands, and it's a very small country so they are all fairly easy to get to from Amsterdam.

Delft is only 40 minutes away from Amsterdam by train. It's adorable, and some of the scenes look exactly like Vermeer painted them when he resided here. Also, it was where Werner Herzgog set most of his film "Nosferatu", which is one of the creepiest movies I've ever seen.

Happily, there were no vampires or plagues of rats to be found now.

I was there in October and had a couple days of stunningly beautiful weather. The light in the afternoon made magic.

The "View of Delft", much as Vermeer had seen it:

In centuries past, Delft was known for its ceramics industry, which was an attempt to knock off fine China from China. While tourist shops sell chinese-made ceramics painted in Delft Blue, you can still find beautiful antique vases and tile work there.

Both of the churches in town had quite a lean on their steeples:

There wasn't much to do there but it was a lovely place to wander around and explore for a couple of days.