Today we woke up even earlier than the day before, so we are slowly adjusting to the time zone. Our plan was to take a trip to Kronborg, a renaissance castle and fortress. Although we left earlier, we had to take the train again, which was a bit of a longer ride, so we ended up arriving shortly before 3. A lot of the time, we have to walk from the train station to the place we're visiting, which can take about ~20-30 mins. We only had 2 hours to tour the castle, but we decided that we would go through each section quickly.
This castle is famous because it is the setting for William Shakespeare's Hamlet. First we visited the main part of the castle which had displays of what the castle looked like when royalty used to live there. There were lots of paintings and tapestry, which I found smelly. The difficulty with old artifacts is that you cannot wash them as it might deterriorate and what ends up happening is that over the years, they beging to smell musky and damp. We learned that a lot of oriental ornaments such as porcelain, china, and oriental style dressers/wardrobes were considered as valuables by the wealthy.
The next part of the castle we visted was the Danish Maritime Museum, which had lots of info on the history of Danish shipping. This country is really into shipping, we always see tons of sail boats and ships out in the sea. Half way through the Maritime museum, we were supposed to go up the telegraph tower, where you can look out from the top of the castle. The view was spectacular as there was amost a 360 degree view of the sea. The first time we went through the museum, we totally missed the stairwell into the tower, so we had to go back to the begining and find the stairwell again. It was a long climb to the top and because I am so out of shape, I ran out of breath really quickly!
After the maritime museum, we only had about 8 minutes to see the casemates, which is undeneath the castle and an undergroundd network of corridors and rooms that served as solider quarters during times of war. Although there was virtually no windows and quite a gloomy place, Jenning and I wished we had more time to explore it. It was really hard to see anything and as we were making our way through the corridors, the guide was literally putting out the lights behind us!
We were the last tourists in the castle, so once we left, they locked the doors. Jenning and I decided to explore the outer perimiter of the castle a bit and there was a nice little rocky beach where locals were fishing. We decided to sit on a rock and eat the sandwhiches we made earlier. It took us about ~30 mins to walk back to the train station. We decided to treat G out for dinner tonight. We ended up going to have Shawerma, which was pretty good. Everything here is super expensive. One Shawerma without a drink costs about 35 DK, which is around ~$7 CAD, and this is considered cheap here. A bottle of water is about $4! Now I know why people here look pretty healthy. They walk and bike a lot and since food is expensive, they don't gorge on food like North Americans.
G started doing a 30 minute work out with Jenning and I on Monday. Jenning and I are hoping that all the walking and biking will help us get a little healthier.
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