Athena’s Banquet

Today I skipped the 85 kroner hotel breakfast in favor of wandering the streets in search of food.  This worked out better than I had hoped, as just a block away was this wee hole-in-the-wall bakery (you will know the bakery by the sign of the giant plastic pretzel) where I was able, by dint of a fair bit of pointing, to obtain for myself a almond-yellow hand-sized pie-shaped thing, which upon further inspection of the oral variety turned out to be a cold sweet cakey pastry with a nice creamy filling.  It tasted a bit like underbaked cake, and was delicious.  And cheap!  Only 10 Kroner for a most satisfactory breakfast.

I ate it as I walked over to Slotsholmen, where they have a variety of castles all stacked on top of each other, some of which you can wander around inside at will.  Apparently the Danes have real issues with fire security, and have managed to burn down their castle more than a few times (which is on top of the times when it’s been sacked by the Swedes and a team of rock-cutters (no,  seriously!) have been called in to dismantle it.)  But they keep building it on the same site, so there are giant underlayers of castles underneath the top one, and for a mere 70 kr. one can go ramble around the underside.

Or, as happened in my case, you could get there a few minutes before 10a, walk around the courtyard and top castle, find the entrance to the undercastle (okay, it’s called the Ruins of Absalon cause he was the dude what built the first castle, but I like undercastle better), note the rather absolute state of its closure, walk around for a while, return to the entrance, note its continued state of closure, walk to the Jewish Museum a few blocks away, note its closure until 1pm, walk back to the entrance, give up and find the gift shop, ask if the ruins were open today, and find out that the guy in the gift shop who was supposed to open the ruins forgot that it was his day to open the ruins, watch him blush furiously and get (one assumes) ribbed in Danish by his coworkers, and then get escorted down and let in for free.  It was lovely and dark and creepy down there, and reminded me strongly of Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico although rather more man-made and on a substantially smaller scale.

The Jewish Museum didn’t open until 1, as mentioned before, so I pulled out my guidebook and figured out that the Royal Library was also quite nearby.  Being a library sort of person, I decided that this would be a very adequate place for a stopover and wait, so I found my way in (through a long wind-tunnel formed by two very tall buildings, and I assure you that the wind really needed no assistance), mucked about the gift shop for a while, buying myself a few small notebooks and pens because I am an absolute sucker for European school supplies, and then got a mocha that started with a enormous glob of solid chocolate paste being dropped into the bottom of the glass.  Which is, really, how all good drinks should start.  I decided that one of the notebooks would be a travel journal and the other could be a quilting notebook (it has graph paper inside!) and so began journaling in the one I had decided was a travel journal.  Which is what I’m transcribing now, several days later, and with more funny put in.  One hopes.

The library was right on a canal, so the tour-boats kept going by and the gulls kept diving down to eat whatever they were eating.  It was very wild and very pleasant.

At 2 (I got sidetracked by a public access computer terminal and some emailing) I went over to the Jewish Museum, which had a rather spectacular collection of artifacts particularly focusing on the Danish rescue of their Jews during World War II.  This was one of the reasons (okay, most of them actually) that I wanted to come to Copenhagen, because of  Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars and its recounting of how the Danes snuck most of their Jewish population out to Sweden.  It was also pretty architecturally amazing, with off-kilter walls and subtly slanted floors.

By 3 (it’s a small museum), I was horribly hungry so  went back to the library cafe and got a sandwich for 40 kr ($7).  I also checked on the status of the ballet, which sells substantially discounted tickets the day of the performance, but they weren’t actually performing anything that night, which was very very sad.  At 4 I headed over to the National Museum (free admission!), but I didn’t realize that they closed at 5, so I got to do a quick run through the Egyptian amulet collection (which was a TRIP after just finishing American Gods, I tell you what), check out the scent room (Really!  A room of smells!), and then head back to my hotel for a well-earned collapse.

The next day I went to Elsinore.