We got up Tuesday around 9, had our 7-11 breakfast, and walked to the train station to head to Roskilde, about 20 miles west of Copenhagen. (After grabbin another delicious ginger latte at Joe and the Juice, of course.) It was about a 25 minute ride to the town, and a pleasant walk through the cute little town. Here’s the old Rathouse:

The cathedral plaza was a few blocks away.

Roskilde Cathedral is a UNESCO World Heritage site constructed in the 12th century. (In case you were wondering, yes – it also burned down regularly.)

We did the self-guided tour, which includes an elaborate guide to all the royalty buried there. There are many, many kings and queens in the various chapels around the church. It’s still in use, too; the current queen has her burial site ready to go when it’s time. I liked that we got to tour it – it’s very modern, yet it fits well.

These were extra-creepy.

You know how you measure your kids and mark their heights on a door jamb? Apparently that’s been going on forever. Here’s the heights of various kings:

The chapel is monstrous.

That grave with the black marker – that’s a horse. Supposedly he haunts the cathedral, too. Ghost horse.

After we were done at the cathedral, we headed off toward the Viking Ship Museum, which is located at the bottom of a very steep hill on the banks of the fjord. It’s a really scenic spot. We got tickets and toured the outside exhibits first, which involved an actual shipbuilding reconstruction that they invite people to help with. They had several reconstruction ships there.

We went down to see the fjord. This boat seemed pretty appealing:

You could also sign up to take a short trip on one of the Viking ships. This one looked really fun; the other that was leaving at that moment was full of people trying to row it with giant narrow oars. It was going nowhere and the people looked miserable, so I feel like we made the right choice to not go on that one.

We went inside the museum, and Bally tested out a Viking ship. I’m pretty sure his arms aren’t long enough to row.

They had an exhibit with all the pieces they’d salvaged from various ancient wrecks in the fjord. One of them was nearly complete.

The shop there was great, too; we got several souvenirs, gifts, and I got these amazing Danish sunglasses:

Then we went to their restaurant, Cafe Knarr, for lunch. I had a vegetable plate and Matt had a smorgasbord plank with various fish salads. Both of ours included roasted parsnips, barley, and pickled buckthorn. This meal was so incredibly good it makes me kind of sad to see it and know that it’s currently so very far away from me.

Smart people would have taken the bus or a taxi back up the giant hill into town, but we said, “eh, it’s only a kilometer long.” It’s not like we’d already walked over 50 miles on the trip or anything. So we climbed the hill, and I was pretty sure I was going to die at the end. It felt like a victory getting back to the cathedral.

We walked back through town, stopping into a couple stores along the way. I bought a maroon Fjallraven Kanken backpack at one of the shops, because everyone in Europe has one and I obviously needed one too.

I used the 2-kroner train station restroom (in keeping with all restrooms in Denmark, it was spotless), and then we hopped on the train back to Copenhagen. This one was the coveted double-decker train, so we went up to the top deck for a really excellent view on the return trip.

Here’s the main train station in CPH. It’s hard to see, but they have a huge oldtimey neon clock on the front that looks really cool at night.

Here’s the Rathaus near our hotel.

The giant Palace Hotel is on the same plaza. The rental bikes and Tree.0 are nearby. We picked the perfect place to stay in Copenhagen, since it was walking distance to everything we’d want to see.

We did some shopping around our neighborhood, picked up a few more souvenirs, and then headed to the Bastard Cafe. It was getting colder outside, so we wanted to go hang out and play games. Also, they had a great beer selection. We played a game that involved one person being the criminal avoiding detection, and the other trying to trap them.

We then headed back to the hotel to organize and pack our suitcases. After a while, we headed back out to find dinner at a restaurant we’d picked in Nyhavn. We rented Bycycklen to ride over there, but once we arrived we couldn’t figure out where the dropoff point was. The GPS map on the bike was confusing and kept trying to send us in the wrong direction, and their website wasn’t much more help.

We finally found the stop a few blocks away (much farther from Nyhavn than you’d expect). It was full, but the nice thing is that you can park them there regardless; they just need to be near the docking station and locked. We did so and walked to the restaurant, grabbing a table on the patio at Cap Horn. It was cold, but they had blankets there for us.

We ordered an Aperol Spritz (which seemed to be a very popular drink there, much like in Rome). My dinner was a beet cake with celery puree, crisps, and pears. Matt had a flatiron steak with plums. Both were excellent. It started to rain during dinner, so we had to shift over a table to get under the giant patio umbrella.

After dinner, the rain had died down to a drizzle, so we walked back in the direction of our hotel. We stopped in at Ruby, an attractive little cocktail bar along a canal. We chose a set of armchairs and had a couple cocktails in their very-hygge setting before heading back to our hotel for the night. We were excited to get to Berlin the next day, but I was apprehensive that it couldn’t possibly be as great as Denmark. We’d had such a great time there, we were pre-regretting leaving!

Miles walked: 11.27/ 58.57 total