Tag Archive for 'Denmark'

Denmark (3): Helsingør

Thank you so much for the encouragement about my Pomatomus socks, and for all your lovely comments about Popknits!

Whilst in Denmark we visited Helsingør, or Elsinore, as Shakespeare re-named the town in Hamlet, and spent an afternoon at Kronborg Castle.

It began life as a fortress in the 1420s, with the current castle being built after a fire in the 1600s. As ever, it’s the details I love. This is from the entrance arch:

A view from inside the castle, looking across the cannons to the sea beyond. Can you spot the sailing boat in the bottom right window pane?

The courtyard walkway was made from these amazing arches:

Looking backwards across the moat to the castle entrance:

Outside the moat, the cottages had been renovated and were beautifully preserved:

There was a lovely outdoor cafe where we had our lunch.

Published on August 20, 2008. 10 Comments Tags: , , .

Denmark holiday (2): Charlottenlund

We left Copenhagen on Tuesday for our second hotel a few miles up the coast, in Charlottenlund.

It was a beautiful 17th century building; we were lucky to have a room at the front, with a little balcony, and from there we had a lovely view of nearby cottages, and behind them, the sea.

We decided to hire a car for the rest of our holiday, and we went to some lovely places. I’ll share some of them over the next few days – hope you don’t get bored! But for now, I’d just like to take you for a wander in this small area – it’s not a major tourist ‘site’, but I feel it’s just too pretty to skim over.

We saw lots of thatched roofs,

and quite a few cottages, like this one, with beautiful mustard-yellow plasterwork. Isn’t the garden just perfect, with flowers planted to match the walls?

I love how, if you ignore the streetlamp, this path probably looked this way for very many generations.

Charlottenlund is such a charming area, it truly was a pleasure to spend time here wandering around. Next time, I’ll take you to Helsingør, the 12th century castle where Hamlet was set.

Published on August 14, 2008. 6 Comments Tags: , .

Denmark holiday (1): Copenhagen

We dropped our boys off at the university where their rock school was being held on Saturday morning, and on Sunday we flew out to Copenhagen. This was our first week alone for about six years, which was pretty special, but even more special is that it was our twentieth annual holiday together. I’m going to post a couple of pics from our first holiday when we get back from Dorset next week.

Typically on a city break we would spend all day wandering around, getting a feel for the place, and lots of time visiting museums and old churches. This time, however, my lungs are still not back to normal, and so walking very far was out of the question. We were also unlucky with the weather; here’s how the sky looked for a lot of the time when it wasn’t raining:

So, instead of spending several days there, as we had originally planned, we had a day and a half in the city and then moved north to stay in a lovely hotel by the coast. On our first day we visited Tivoli gardens, which apparently is the pleasure garden on which Disneyland was based. Here are some pictures of the gardens (complete with some blue sky):

That evening, we ate at a pretty restaurant, in the oldest quarter of town, which was originally a mill. It was small and intimate, and the food was great.

The next day Continue reading ‘Denmark holiday (1): Copenhagen’

Published on August 12, 2008. 13 Comments Tags: , , .