Chapter 8 - Day 9: Rosenborg Castle

June 17

We were back at exploring the city today, beginning with Rosenborg Castle, built in the 1600's.
It is inside a lovely park, right in the heart of town.

While the outside is certainly striking, what we came for were "the crown jewels" inside. They were much more than crowns, but, crowns first...

There were other stunning jewels.

 













 

But there were many jewels of other kinds, as well, like this (gulp) saddle:

Ivory carvings                                                                               

 

 

After seeing these in "the Treasury", we were unprepared for the many other "jewels" to be found as we walked through the castle rooms, like this little clock

The tapestries were wonderful

Unbelievable handpainted furniture

 The royals seemed to have more interesting china cabinets than most of us...

Some items were simply amazing - the wall and furniture!

Likely not a toy....

This fixture is carved from amber.

And then there were the "ordinary" household things...the home office...

The nursery

and other daily necessities

They also had rooms for special occasions, like for greeting state vistors.

 And just the business as usual throne room

The castle looks out on pretty gardens - these are in the back

These are around the front. All in all, quite regal!

We went from the castle to a design store that specialized with objects made in Africa, African Touch, including ceramics, like this mirror.

There were also artworks, like this sculpture.

Whew! Enough for one chapter..more of this day in the next one.

Chapter 9 - Day 9 (continued): The Royal Botanical Gardens and Art Museums

June 17 (continued)


Next came the Royal Botanical Gardens. This was one of the few days a week that their cactus and other greenhouses are open for a couple of hours. It was worth working this into our plans. 
On our way, we saw the exceptional rock garden.

If you love cacti and succulents, this is a great visit! Check out these beauties!

In other greenhouses, there were orchids and other flowering plants. They just had to pose!

After that (and at nearly mid-afternoon), we had had a very full lunch of old Nordic smørrebrød at Restaurant Schonnemann -- wonderful gently smoked and flaky salmon with veal liver pate for Lester and great pickled herring and danish blue cheese for Elaine.

But there was more beauty to come this day. We headed over to the museum area of town to check out the Hirschsprung Collection, a private gallery of 19th Century Danish art. We knew nothing of this and were interested to see this in comparison to the more familiar European and American works of this period.

While the works were not startling, they had a calm loveliness that some of us wish the world (and current art) contained.

Just further down the street is Copenhagen's other major international art museum (besides Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek - see Chapter 4) - Statens Museum for Kunst. It, too has some wonderful Pre-Impressionist paintings.

 As well as Post-Impressionist.

 There was also interesting sculpture.

And artists new to us.

Dinner this night was at AOC, a very fancy new nordic restaurant. It was much more elegant that than others--Bror, Radio, Host, but the flavors were similar. This one was much much more expensive with 4,6, and 9 course menus plus a variety of starters. We had the six-course dinner. 

While the service was cordial, most of the food was very precious --trying to hard to be innovative in using fresh local ingredients, yet most courses were very similar in texture.  Our primary items were raw shrimp with herbs and a beet root sauce...

 We also had white asparagus in a hazelnut sauce--the least innovative of all the white asparagus (it was that season!) we had..  The main was roe deer, again with a light sauce---same ole, same old.  

The only really wonderful dish was the dessert, a walnut ice cream with beet root caramel and a Jerusalem artichoke brulee on the top.  It looked like cream brulee and tasted incredible

The day ended wet, rainy and windy. There were folks out in wool hats and gloves! I think it was 101 this day in Chapel Hill :)