Well, once our train came. Unlike yesterday however, figuring out how to get to the Castle was relatively easy. We'd walked about five steps from the train station when I spotted it in the distance.
"Let's head that way."
First though, we had a little lunch.
These hotdogs, with their crunchy bits of onion and huge sweet pickles and 22dkk price tag rate as favorite meal #3 on this trip. That taken care of, we started across Hellsingor toward the castle.
Hamlet's Castle, Kronborg Slot to those playing along at home, far beat out the other castle for Sheer Coolness. Shakespeare likely never visited the castle of course, but he did pick a neat one.
Because I care about the Danish Economy I got the Super-Cool ticket that cost more and got us into the Church, Royal Apartments, Maritime Museum, and Casemates. We did the Royal Apartments first. After having seen so many rooms of old furniture, walk hangings, and paintings they start to blur together, but there were still some impressive paintings. And impressive rooms.
We then went onto the Church, which, surprisingly, was just a one room church. Oddly relieved, we went onto the casemates -- which turned out to be the coolest part. Of course I had no idea what a casemate was, but turns out it involves going underneath the castle. Down there it is Dark and Cold and you can imagine all kind of horrible things are going to come after you with rusty knives.
Luckily this guy is here to protect you.
He is some kind of Viking dude who sleeps until Denmark needs him, when he awakes and does -- something good. I don't think he's done it lately.
We kept exploring again. For some inexplicable reason they have 2 mannikins of soldiers down there. Demonstrating, I think, how exactly this was useful to the castle. Unfortunately having only 2 serves to be more creepy than useful because our reaction went something like "Huh? Where'd he come from?" and then some nervous laughter.
After that we went to the Maritime Museum, and since it was mostly model ships we moved quickly through. Toward the end we wound up at some stairs with a sign pointing up that said "Tower". With no other explanation needed, we went up.
And up.
And up.
And my calf muscles started to seize up in protest, and then--
We were there. It was windy and cold, but very cool to be at the top of the castle.
Going down was easier.
Worn out by 7 days of travel, we decided to end on that high note and head back to the B&B for a relaxing evening and some packing. This is what tired looks like.
We wanted to get some kind of vegetables, but it seemed that Denmark had conspired against us. We'd wondered earlier when the Information center in Hellsingor was closed, but as we looked for a grocery store we discovered most places were closed. My capitalist American brain was already grappling with the idea of so many stores being closed on a Sunday, but today was a Monday! They were supposed to be open!
Except that apparently today was 7 weeks after Easter. And that is a Holiday worthy of closing most stores.
1 comment:
Those pictures from on top of the castle were Beautiful. You two are sooo lucky to be there. What fun! Thanks for sharing.
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