Helsingør and Kronborg Castle

Hello Hello Hello!!

Today we made our way out to Helsingør, a coastal city in Northern Denmark which is not only VERY close to Sweden and the location of Hamlet's castle, it's also a great place to explore, shop, and enjoy :)

(Haven't figured out how to rotate it yet. I will eventually!)

HAHA! This was painted right on the street!

It was LOVELY! We had about two hours to explore the city before our tour of Kronborg Castle began. We shopped around (a lot of stores were cheaper than the ones in Copenhagen), bought yummy pastries, and sat by the Sound of Øresund and looked at Sweden!

Hi Sweden!!

Then, we made our way over to the castle!

The castle was beautiful, inside and out! There were tapestries over 400 years old in almost every room, and much of the old architecture was preserved. We went on a guided tour through the king and queen's bedrooms, the ballroom, and the DUNGEONS!! All pictured respectively!

 

The dungeon was REALLY dark; don't let the camera flash fool you into thinking this is a light and happy place. There were oil lamps scattered throughout the place, but it was still pretty creepy and hard to navigate! The dungeon was for prisoners (of course) and sometimes for soldier housing for various reasons. The daily ration for soldiers living in the dungeons included SEVEN LITERS of beer! Hopefully that made dungeon life more manageable!

 

 

Both the architecture of the castle and the artwork within it were extremely impressive. I have many more pictures if anyone is interested!

Following the tour, I came home, rested up a bit, then headed out to a WONDERFUL Indian restaurant with some buddies. Afterwards, we wandered around and hit up a few bars. We played foosball (sp?) with some REAL local Danes! They were VERY enthusiastic about the game and it was a lot of fun playing with them, even if they weren't impressed with our skills at all :) After that, we went and watched some live music and enjoyed each others' company, then wandered on back home!

In approximately 4 hours (I'm writing this at nearly 3 am - holy heck!) I will have completed my first whole week in Copenhagen! I'm already SO much more acclimated than I was 6 days ago; it feels like it's been much longer than one week at this point simply because we've packed so much into each day. Soon I'll post an update on CLASSES and such! We had our first two days last week, but I was too excited about Helsingør and the castle to remember to mention them :) 

STAY TUNED!!