National Train Day

The renovated Union Depot in St. Paul was abuzz today for National Train Day. It's convenient to us (we park there when we go to the Farmers' Market) and it fit into our "take a vacation in the city" plan for the day ... lunch at Obento-Ya, ice cream in St. Anthony, and then take in the sights in St. Paul.

A beautiful day for everything too:

Equipment from the nearby Minnesota Transportation Museum was brought over to Union Depot

Checking out the legroom on this 1950s-era coach...

No air-conditioning on this hot day - I can't imagine it would have been all that warm in winter either. But the colors and metal trim were SO mid-century...

Amtrak had just started service to the Depot - they dropped off some Superliner coaches for people to walk through

More comfortable than the old Great Northern seats!

Checking out the sights from the dining car...

Copenhagen Trip - Day Six

11 pm last night – looking toward downtown under clouds. Copenhagen – the city of steeples.

We decided not to go to Malmo this morning, as we hadn’t really finished our souvenir shopping in Copenhagen. The stores in Sweden weren’t opening until noon, and we would have had to buy both roundtrip tickets to cross the Oresund Bridge, as well as transit passes in Malmo, since the places we were most interested in weren’t easily connected on foot. And we would’ve needed to convert more money, since neither Sweden nor Denmark use the Euro, and neither country wants to use the other’s currency. By the time we got back to Denmark, the stores that were open here today would have closed...

The weather was cloudy and sunny with gusty winds and occasional sudden drenching downpours, or, as it goes, another typical day. Ann remarked we’d be huddling under an awning in Sweden, too, if we’d gone over there.

Instead, we headed back downtown and worked our way from Central Station out through the shopping streets and back.

These polser trailers are EVERYWHERE - you can get your sausage fix at pretty much any public square in the entire country. There's even one set up at baggage claim at the airport...

Wynn found several more elephants to pose with:

Posing with some kind of royal elephant-dragon-griffin critter in front of City Hall.

The Stroget after a nice stiff rainshower. Not nearly as many tourists out on a Sunday morning; it was a good idea to come back here as we could really take the time to look instead of just get pushed along by the crowd.

We went into Tivoli Gardens again (the Copenhagen Card gives free admission, so why not?) and had a very nice Scandinavian lunch. The music stages all over Tivoli were featuring high-school and college bands and singing groups – a very Glee-kind-of-vibe going on, including the songs being performed (“Forget You” – but since this is Denmark, the uncensored version… yes, with little kids walking all over the place… no, nobody got fired or even seemed concerned… the adults and teenagers seemed to be enjoying it…)

After returning to the hotel, I picked up a few last-minute items for dinner and treats to take back to the States, and then we went for a swim in the hotel pool. Ann & Wynn took a nap afterward while I worked through the leftovers in the fridge.

Tonight we’re running one last load of laundry and have the suitcases opened up on the floor, figuring out what gets packed where. We’ll head out bright and early to the train station – leaving the hotel about 7 am; our flight leaves at 10 for Amsterdam, where we have about 2 hours to connect, and then a 9-hour flight back to Minneapolis.

We still have Danish cash to blow at the airport – here’s 91,50 DKK just in coins to burn (that’s almost US$20). They don’t make 5 Kr coins for some reason, just 50 ore, 1 Kr, 2, 10, and 20. At 50 Kr (US$10) they switch over to bills – under that it’s only coins. And they won't convert Danish coins back into US$ at the Travelex at MSP...

Here's one last photo from downtown

This will be the last posting until we get back to the States. Happy Fathers Day, Happy Gotcha Day, and wish us good luck on our travels tomorrow!

Copenhagen Trip - Day Four

A late start this morning – we didn’t get out of the hotel until after 10:00 am – but we managed to cover a lot of ground nonetheless.

Our exploration today took us first to Copenhagen’s Central Station – a vast and magnificent building from 1911. Virtually all the long-haul, regional, and local trains pass through here and the place is alive day and night. There’s a small shopping center inside the main hall, and hotels ring the station for blocks around.

A big model railroad diorama inside the train station - how perfect! For 20 DKK you can run the trains around, too.

Our next train took us 35 minutes west to Roskilde (pronounced ROASH-keel, rhymes with “roast eel”), the ancient capital of Denmark. Narrow streets, cute houses, six-hundred-year-old graveyards, ethnic restaurants – plus the home of one of Europe’s biggest annual music festivals (happening in another few weeks), and also home to the Viking Ship Museum.

Inside the museum they’ve partially reconstructed various vessels that were recovered from the fjord outside. They’ve also built a new vessel using ancient plans, and sailed it all over the North Atlantic.

While the reconstructed ships are quite delicate, most of the museum is actually hands-on, and there are a couple replica boats in the main hall kids can romp around in.

Here's the replica longship the researchers built and sailed - the performance was better than anyone had expected. These guys were really tough to have this in the open ocean!

Wiped out, passed out on the train back home.

For dinner tonight: fresh Danish strawberries, mixed greens salad, multigrain toast, and chicken breast sauteed in creamy sweet Danish butter.

The train back to Copenhagen delivered us straight to our home base, and after cooking dinner we headed out again to Central Station and across the street to Tivoli – the famous amusement park. It’s not terribly large, but the location downtown can’t be beat, and there are dozens of restaurants, several live performance stages, thrill rides, and private halls for ticketed concerts. The mix of food, activities, and people-watching appeals to little kids, teenagers, and grown-ups equally. At night the entire place is lit up with thousands of electric bulbs on every tree, ride, and building.

We walked all over the grounds, and Wynn got to go on a couple kiddie rides. We left about 7 pm – the crowd was getting pretty thick as we headed out – it’s a nice Friday evening and Tivoli is the place to be to start the weekend.

In front of the Chinese Pavilion - they stage pantomime shows here. Wynn wants to go back tomorrow for more rides...

Copenhagen Trip - Day Three, Part Two

After dinner (leftovers from all the cooking we’ve been doing) we took the train one stop down to Norreport and walked a couple blocks to the Rundetaarn (Round Tower), an astronomical observatory built in 1642 and dedicated to Tycho Brahe.

Happy ballet dance on the train platform

"Rush hour" in Copenhagen is office workers walking across downtown to the train stations. Hardly any auto traffic on the streets. How refreshing.

Awesome. Older than almost anything in America. Taller than the churches in the name of science (although there's a church attached to it - remember where the money was...)

There is a spiral ramp leading almost all the way up (to make it easier to move equipment and supplies); stairs for just the last two floors. On top, you can walk all the way around outside. It’s Copenhagen’s Space Needle!

I love how the evening sun illuminates the brickwork and Wynn in this shot.

The city views just can't be beat from here. You can really see how the people go about their lives and their work.

Since virtually all the stores downtown close by 7pm, we took the train back to our station and walked around the residential neighborhood on the other side of the tracks. It’s the embassy district – hello Russian security dudes – and packed with international schools and gorgeous condominiums, dripping with history and architectural detail on the outside, sleek furnishing and modern design on the inside.
Wynn’s in bed; we’re running a load of laundry and relaxing with books while a rainshower passes through. Tomorrow we are thinking about visiting the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, about a half-hour west of here; we’ll see how the weather holds up.

Copenhagen Trip - Day Three

Bonus afternoon posting!

We all got plenty of sleep last night – Wynn was snoozing until after 9 am, and I managed to get a good 8 hours in.

Our travels today put us on a bus downtown to the main square of Kongens Nytorv, and a short walk over to the historic neighborhood of Nyhavn (new port), where we took an hour-long cruise along the waterfront and canals. This was definitely the best way to see the sights! The castles, important public buildings, and cute upscale neighborhoods all face the water somehow. We covered a lot more ground by not being on the ground, and Wynn had a great time.

Magasin du Nord - the Nordstrom's of Denmark, with a Byerly's supermarket in the basement

What you don't see in this photo are the three busloads of tourists behind us - Koreans, Chinese, Italians, Germans. Everyone is trying to communicate with each other in English, since that's the 2nd language everyone knows... really neat, actually

Most of the buildings along the canal are from the late 1600s - mid 1700s

There are several royal palaces around town; this is the main one, with the national cathedral in the center of the photo

Commercial buildings along the canal - this is where the city was founded

Stock exchange on the left; parliament / supreme court on the right. The tower of the stock exchange is a bronze sculpture of four dragons whose tails intertwine!

We had lunch at a little family café a couple blocks off Nyhavn (the restaurants along the canal are really marked up, but once you move into non-tourist territory, the prices come down…) where Wynn tried smorrebrod – an open-faced rye bread “sandwich” – with toppings of cold-boiled egg and shrimp, and loved it.

We then walked along the shopping avenue called Stroget for some people-watching, and finally caught a bus and train to get back to the hotel about 2:30. Ann’s taking a catnap, and Wynn’s zoned out with Disney Channel (Phineas & Ferb, dubbed in German…)

Depending on how everyone wakes up, we may head back downtown after dinner for a little more sightseeing…

There are elephant sculptures all over town painted up in different schemes as part of a fundraiser to protect Asian elephants & build a new wing at the zoo. Wynn has decided to pose next to every one she sees...

The little building in the middle is an espresso stand. There is cafe seating all over the square here, and a fountain across the street. The only Starbucks in the country is at the airport...

Meh. Someone's getting tired.

Easy-to-use public transportation. No gates or barriers like in Chicago, Tokyo, Hong Kong - it's all on the honor system, apparently, although we see everyone using their punch-card passes.