Copenhagen, Denmark

Copenhagen is lovely. Windy as hell, but lovely. I think Stockholm is more chic and Oslo is more friendly, but Copenhagen has a style and a vibe all its own. Great architecture, great shopping and great museums. The central city is quite compact, so in a little more than 2 days I was able to see pretty much all the main sites, and still had time to catch a movie and go for a couple of great dinners. Here are the highlights.

VIEWS OF COPENHAGEN

The most pleasant surprise of the weekend – my 19th floor hotel room and the great view of Copenhagen from my window.

Looking out at the main train station: 

Copenhagen, with Malmo (Sweden) across the water in the distance:

The Tivoli amusement park in the foreground; the bridge between Denmark and Sweden in the backgroud:

Tivoli is an old amusement park that takes up a couple of city blocks in the middle of Copenhagen. It was closed for the winter, but the view from the hotel provided an interesting peek inside. The daytime view:

And at night, with paths and buildings lit up for a concert on the grounds: 

And just because I like the old-school neon signs in Copenhagen:

THE NATIONALMUSEET

The National Museum has an excellent collection of Iron Age and Bronze Age artifacts, and a very well-organized of Viking history.

Some of the massive “runes” or memorial stones:

Remnants of a Viking boat:

Viking music – some horns:

Celtic faces on a huge silver chalice (about 2 feet across):

Silver, the primary prescious metal of Viking trade:

THE NY CARLSBERG GLYPTOTEK

This gallery includes European paintings and sculpted art. It is housed in a lovely building, with this winter garden at its center: 

Statues of Danish queens. Seems like the Queen gets mad respect in Denmark:

Beethoven:

“Ophelia”:

Rodin’s “Thinker”:

In the Rodin gallery, where someone prepares to sketch the lovely statue of a young ballerina:

 ROSENBORG SLOT (CASTLE)

This castle was build in the early 17th century by the Danish king Christian IV. It is in an ornate Dutch Renaissance style and holds royal collections from Christian IV and other Danish royalty of the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as the Danish crown jewels.

Interior design inspiration? Eye-catching raspberry and pistachio stripes:

Decorate much? Christian VIII’s room.

Frederik IV’s room:

A small sitting room with an amber chandelier:

These kings liked pictures of themselves on their horses, especially when looking entirely unipressed while doing improbably jumps

There are special rooms for various collections, including a Bronze Room, Porcelain Room, Regalia Room, and this Glass Room:

The “Long Hall” with its throne:

At the other end of the Long Hall, three giant silver lion statues stand in front of another set of thrones:

Some of the royal collection in the Treasury, including a huge serving dish covered in dozens of carved cameos:

Skulls were so hot in the 1600′s:

Crown jewels!

Fit for a queen:

Well, time for bed. Tomorrow, I’ll post more about Copenhagen: food, shops, architecture, and observations on things Danes like.

Oxford, UK

Last Saturday I spent the day in Oxford gawking at the huge university and college buildings.

The day started out grey and cool and by the afternoon the rain was pouring down. Though the buildings have much more heating now than they did when they were first built, they were still very chilly. Slogging around in damp clothes wasn’t that pleasant, so it ended up being a short day and I caught a late afternoon to London. But despite the weather, it was still a worthwhile day trip. Here are some of the highlights.

Statues outside the Sheldonian Theatre and the History of Science Museum:

The Great Gate beneath the Tower of the Five Orders in the quadrangle of the Bodleian library:

The highlight of the trip was the extended tour I had booked of the Bodleian library.  The Bodleian was built between 1427 and 1636, and holds the historic rooms of the Divinity School, Duke Humfrey’s library, the Convocation House and other wonderful rooms. The Bodleian is still a working research/reference library.

This room was originally the School of Divinity. This beautiful structure took more than 80 years of non-stop crafting by a team of stonemasons. Fans of the Harry Potter movies might recognize this space as the Infirmary.

The ceiling includes hundreds of  carved “bosses” that form words, crests and symbolic pictures.

Above the Divinity School is Duke Humfrey’s library, an absolutely beautiful space that smells wonderfully of very old books. It was built in the late 1400′s, but suffered greatly in the English Reformation. Around 1600, it was restored by Thomas Bodley and is still in use today. Unfortunately, pictures were not permitted inside.

Below is the Radcliffe Camera building, which holds another beautiful library and reading room. No pictures were permitted inside, but it’s worth a Google. The inside is like a cake, with lovely robins-egg blue  walls and tiers of balconies and white plaster decorations.

The visitor’s entrance to Christ Church College.  The University of Oxford is made up of a number of different colleges. Most of the colleges have their own complexes, where the students and faculty live, eat and study/work. Christ Church is one of the largest colleges.

The fan-vaulted ceiling in the staircase up to the Christ Church College grand hall:

The “Tom Quad” quadrangle, named after the six-ton Great Tom bell that hangs in the tower:

Inside the Christ Church cathedral – the St. Frideswide window that tells the story of a local saint from the 8th century.

The nave and pipe organ.

Streets around Christ Church.

Magdalen Bridge – in the summer flat boats called “punts” go up and down the river and many launch from this dock. In Oxford, the word Magdalen is pronounced “mawdlin”, for reasons that seem to have a certain degree of historical accuracy but still seem generally ridiculous.

The Quadrangle inside Magdalen College:

Statues in the quadrangle, which allegedly inspired C.S. Lewis’  stone statues in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

Magdalen College’s great hall:

Just a few of the many, many bicycles around Oxford:

The most surprising thing about Oxford was the students. I must admit I expected them to look like this:

But actually, they were all just normal, shockingly-young-looking kids, hanging around acting like normal teenagers, albeit yelling at each other from grand old windows in hundreds-of-years old towers.

Bath, UK

I’m back. It’s been a month since my last post, and it’s been a busy one. It was filled with lots of work, a wonderful 2-week stretch at home, and some big decisions.

Now, I’m on another trip for 4 weeks. I’m in the UK right now, but there are a couple of other stops before I go home, and I’m looking forward to a little last-chance sightseeing. Because the best news of all is that this should be the last long trip that I have to do for a good long time. In the next 8 weeks, I’m moving to a different role (still in the same company) that I hope will give me much more time at home and help me balance my life to be healthier – mentally, emotionally and physically.

It’s crazy that I am walking away from a role that gives me such great opportunity to travel. My 16-year-old self would be throwing a temper-tantrum. It’s proof, clearly, that either my priorities have changed or I’ve gone senile. I will let you make your own decisions on that matter, though it’s probably best if you keep them to yourself.

For now, enjoy some more pictures and stories of things that I saw and sweet stuff that I ate. This one is from a few weeks ago, before my trip home.

Bath Spa, UK

In Jane Austen’s day the middle-class and wealthy socialites of Britain had one place they wanted to be every winter, Bath Spa. All the typical Georgian ladies’ pursuits were at their peak – tea parties, dances, card games, etc. Two of Austen’s novels are set in Bath: Northanger Abbey (my favorite of hers…which practically introduced the “frenemy”) and Persuasion. They show Bath from two perspectives. There is the rash excitement of a young girl going to her first dances and fussing over her first set of woman’s clothes, and then that of an “older” (27!) woman taxed by the stuffiness of high society and its expectations of who she ought to be. Evidence points to the fact that, after an initial infatuation with the city, Jane came to hate it and longed for the simple pleasures of country living.

Despite Jane’s dislike of the city, she lived there for 5 years with her family both before and after the death of her father. Even now, Bath seems a bit like an Austen novel brought to life. Though it suffered heavy bombing in WWII, it still boasts beautiful Georgian architecture and fantastic Roman ruins. It’s spotlessly clean with bright green lawns, and small enough to walk around easily. Basically, Bath is a perfect day trip – close to major cities, and with just enough museums and sights to fill an entire day but still leave time for a leisurely tea before your train home. I’d recommend it.

(Oh yes, and I forgot my camera on this day-trip, so my pictures are even more fuzzy and distant than usual. Go, old iPhone!)

Some of the most expensive Georgian townhouses, in the “Royal Crescent”:

Detail of townhouses in “The Circus”:

A beautiful Tiffany-blue event room in the Assembly Rooms. “Assembly Rooms” is sort of British for “community center”. These are the same Assembly Rooms where Jane Austen (and her characters) had their dances.

Another ballroom at the Assembly Rooms:

*Walk* the few blocks from the Royal Crescent to the Assembly Rooms? Never! Take a chair, my dear.

Yum. Delicious jam sponge cake and my favorite elderflower drink, at the Assembly Rooms’ tea room.

The basement of the Assembly Rooms holds a very good Fashion Museum, containing styles from the past 200+ years and including many modern displays of street and high fashion from recent decades. Here are examples of the muslin dresses from the early 19th century, just like Catherine fussed over in Northanger Abbey.

These shoes are tiny! My feet would have been laughed out of the cobblers.

Plain dress, beautiful hat. At the Jane Austen centre.

A letter from Jane to her sister Cassandra. The way the writing got smaller and smaller towards the end of the page and was crammed into the margins reminded me so much of cards from my wonderful Sam (Grace).

The Jane Austen Center is a small museum but a good value. It started with a 15-minute talk on Jane’s life by a very well-spoken young guide. However, she did look at me quite curiously after I started tearing up when she read an excerpt from one of her sister Cassandra’s letters to a friend, speaking of Jane after her early death:

“I have lost a treasure, such a sister, such a friend as never can be surpassed,- She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow, I had not a thought concealed from her, & it is if I had lost a part of myself.”

How could I not be a little sentimental? I only cried a smidge.

After that it was over to the beautiful Bath Abbey:

The abbey contains a beautiful fan-vault ceiling, like the one I first saw in the tomb of Elizabeth I in Westminster Abbey. I’m in love with it – can I have this in my house?

It also has a huge and very brightly coloured stained glass window.

My cathedral-luck continued and I arrived to hear the organist rehearsing. There were fantastic acoustics and the music of the pipe organ absolutely filled the space. All the tourists sat down to listen, because we kept bumping into each other in our distraction.

Next to the Abbey is the most famous Bath site, the Roman Bath from which it gains its name.

Statue at the Bath, with the Abbey in the background:

Overlooking the main outdoor bath:

And looking up from beside the water:

The overflow of the Sacred Spring. Sadly, I didn’t properly read my map, so I missed seeing the main spring as it was in a separate area off one side of the gift shop.

Pediment and carving of the Gorgon, which once sat atop the entrance of the Roman temple that was beside the Bath:

The gravestone of a Roman soldier: