Christmastime in Copenhagen

Denmark, Day 1
I woke up early this morning to catch a bus to málaga to catch a metro train to the airport to wait in line at the check-in counter to get on a plane to Denmark. On the plane, I was surrounded by little children and babies and an absurd amount of little dogs in carrying cases fancier than my purse.  But it was all worth it when I heard my name, "Kaitlyn" as soon as I exited from the international section past customs. Ingelise was standing right outside waiting for me. She is so sweet and it was so good to see her and hg her again. When we got back to her apartment, she put the nice dinner she had prepared into the oven and we sat down with a glass of wine and just talked. We talked about so much this evening- about my time in Spain, her time in Denmark, languages, traveling, family, etc. The dinner was absolutely delicious- pork tenderloin in an apple, onion, mango and curry sauce over rice. Eating this reminded me of how poor a cook I actually am. This was a true homemade meal that I have been missing out on. And to make it even better, I was eating it in the company of Ingelise- family. A little bit of home away from home. So even though I didn't do any sightseeing today, it was such a great first day in Copenhagen. I'm so blessed to be able to see family that lives so far away from me. They are so special and I'm so proud of my Danish heritage. I'm just so happy and blessed to be here.

Denmark, Day 2
Grocery shopping: check
Stroget: check
Danish National Museum: check
Family: check check check

Today I didn't get to cross off too much of my sightseeing list. It took so long to actually get going. Breakfast was nice and relaxed and then we went to the grocery store to get food for dinner tomorrow night. After that was done we went on our way to the city a little past noon. We took a nice stroll down the Stroget (the longest pedestrian shopping area in Europe). It was beautiful with all of the christmas decorations over the street and in the store windows. There we stopped in a few stores to look at pretty things we could not afford. One of these stores was the Royal Copenhagen: Danish Porcelain store. Everything there was so beautiful. I was tempted to buy the 2011 Danish christmas plate, but it was a little out of my price range.  Plus, we have plenty at home anyway from other years.  After window shopping for a bit, we went to have coffee to escape the cold since the wind was so strong.  When we got to the other end of the Stroget we made our way to the Danish National Museum. This was really interesting because it was full of archaeological artifacts and information about the history of Denmark. We spent most of our time in the section about Danish prehistory. After the museum, it was time to go to Carsten's house since he was preparing us a nice dinner. He made us tenderloin stuffed with ham and cheese with a delicious mustard gravy. This was a wonderful meal. (It's making me hungry just typing this up again).
   I think it's quite amazing. This concept of family. There are people out there, some you have never met before, but because they are family, because they love people who you are related to, they take you in, care for you, and on top of that they care about you too. I think it's such a lovely thing.
  After dinner we looked at pictures from Ingelise and Carsten's trip to Edinburgh last year since they heard that I am going there for my Christmas break.
  Tomorrow hopefully we'll see more things. It'll probably be another late start since we didn't get back until really late. But that's okay, I have the time here.

P.S. Carsten made some really funny jokes today that reminded me of my dad. For example, Ingelise said, "I don't think the busses are running anymore" and he responded, "I don't think they'd be driving anymore either." Well, he's an engineer too. Maybe they all have similar minds.

Denmark, Day 3
First stop, Rosenbborgade, where Soren Kierkegaard lived and wrote a few of his famous books I had looked up the address from a blog online but when we got to the number it gave us, it didn't look quite right and there was no plaque. We looked around for a little, but gave up after about 5 minutes of looking. We decided to just continue down the street towards our next destination. Lo and behold, we found it! It was number 7, not number 15. So all was not lost. It looks like a really interesting location to live too. It's right near the royal park and Rosenborg castle one way and a  nice walking street, round tower and old university dorms in the other direction.  From Kierkegaard's home, we then walked towards Langelinie, the little mermaid.  On the way to see her, we walked down Nyhavn and saw the Christmas market there. Then we went past Amalienborg palace on the left and the Royal opera house across the water on the right. None of the Royal family is here at the moment so there weren't that many guards. Apparently in July, there had been a big storm and the ground floor and kitchens to the palaces had been flooded and they still have yet to be fixed. So no grand changing of the guards while I'm here. 
Then we walked a little more and got to Langelinie. "The Little Mermaid" is a popular fairy tale by the Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen about a young mermaid willing to give up her life in the sea and her identity as a mermaid to gain a human soul and the love of a human prince. But this story doesn't end quite the way that Disney portrayed it. The prince thought it was a different girl who saved him and so he married the other girl.  If the little mermaid slays the prince and lets the blood drip on her feet, she will become a mermaid again. But she cannot bring herself to kill the prince so she throws herself into the sea and dissolves and becomes a wandering spirit sentenced to wander for 300 years. Yeah. Not the happy Disney ending... But still a cool story and a pretty statue.
After seeing the statue, we went to a cute little coffee place to warm up for a bit and then we did a little souvenir shopping and then home to a wonderful warm meal.


Last day in Copenhagen
This time in Denmark has gone by both quickly and slowly. Quickly because you can never have too much time traveling or being with family. Slowly because you can see most of the touristy things in the city in two days, but I had more time than that so we could do things slowly.
Today we went into the city around noon again. This time I wore leggings under my jeans since yesterday I near froze to the bone. We saw the old stock exchange building with its beautiful architecture, the outside of the parliament building and the royal library with the royal gardens. I also continued my Kierkegaard scavenger hunt. Inside the royal gardens there was a statue of Kierkegaard.  Then we met up with Carsten at a place called Charlie's Bar. It was a really cozy spot near Stroget. 
After that we went on to Tivoli. It was just about dusk when we got there so I was able to see some of it in natural light and then I got to see it with all of the lights since it got dark pretty quickly. There was so much light from all of the christmas lights. There was also a special Christmas exhibit in Tivoli about Christmas in Russia. They had some Russian gift shops, Russian food stalls, and a little building in the center with Russian architecture. This was really cool, especially since Russia was on my list of places I would like to travel (But I can't since it's expensive and really hard to get to). So I got a piece of it, however fake it was, here. After Tivoli I took Ingelise and Carsten out for a nice dinner at a place called Klubben to thank them for all their hospitality and then I went back to Ingelise's place. Tomorrow I have to get up at 5am to get to the airport. I have loved my time here in Copenhagen and I would love to come back and see again, especially with friends and people more my age. Hopefully someday...