We flew back to London today (more on that later). Since our flight wasn’t until 6:15, we spent the morning and afternoon checking out other sights in Copenhagen, focusing on Rosenberg Castle after having a wonderful breakfast of coffee and pastries.
This was built by one of Denmark’s most popular and (initially anyway) successful kings, Christian IV:
(Here’s a fun Christian IV fact: he was kind of a perv, having kept a collection of “erotica”–that is to say, porn–and installed a mirror on the floor in one room to enable him to look up the skirts of ladies. See… history isn’t all dates of births, deaths, and battles.)
The architecture of the castle is pleasing, though not wildly spectacular by European castle standards. It is, however, very finely furnished with original and unique pieces. By far, the 3rd floor throne room was the grandest:
This small picture struck us as especially unusual, having seen nothing like it (from this time period) before. It’s like early op art–a single painting of two daughters with one visible from the left side and the other visible from the right:
We also visited the royal treasury, home to Denmark’s Crown Jewels.
In the afternoon, we visited a few churches and did a bit of shopping before heading to the airport.
Unfortunately, our short flight to London was delayed by nearly an hour and a half, plus we faced an hour long wait at immigration in the U.K. (thanks to austerity measures by the Tories!) and a significant traffic jam due to roadwork shutting down the M4 at night. Good grief. So, rather then arriving at the hotel by 8:30ish as I’d expected, it was well past 11:00 when we rolled into the Marriott in Kensington.