The GCW Tour, the Frozen Cruise: Last Call for Copenhagen

Today was our last day in Copenhagen. Tomorrow, we get up at the crack of dawn, Uber our way to the airport, and start making our way home. All things considered, I'd put Copenhagen on the second tier of European cities; nice enough, but it's no Paris or Rome. I am glad I got to see at least some of Scandinavia, though I wish I'd made it a couple of decades ago.

Ah well, better late than never.

The bulk of our day was spent at the National Art Museum, with a stop in the Christiania area of town and a walk through the street food mall. It's a nice museum. Primarily, Danish and Nordic artists of the last few centuries, but some European masters as well. (The EYO was not a fan of the modernists.) Cool space, too. They've clearly blended old and new buildings, and not many museums would dare to hang their paintings twenty feet in the air.

Christiania is Copenhagen's answer to, well, sort of all of Seattle in that a) it's where everyone goes to buy weed, and b) you don't have to be a genius to see the problems that are coming. What started fifty years ago as a squatter's paradise is now some very prime real estate and it's hard to see the current model lasting much longer. About a block from where the dealers were lined up selling was a rather large construction site building what looked to be residential spaces. Dealers, hippies, homeless and tourists versus construction empires and yuppies is not much of a challenge to handicap. 

Anyway, here are a few final pictures...

I don't actually know what this building is, but I just liked it. And it it's
combination of historic and modern, it's pretty representative of lots of Copenhagen.

The interstitial space between the two wings of the National Art Museum.

Who hangs a painting that high up on the wall?
Fabulous!

The EYO wasn't much for modern art, but he did like Still Life with
White Vase, Book and Orange.

Me, I love art in most of its flavors...

Finally, a happy mermaid.

The only picture I could take in Christiania since the folks there
don't want to be filmed. And for the record, the EYO had no idea what he was seeing.

According to the mailbox, three people live on the Lorbas. Lucky... 

Copenhagen Street Food.

More Copenhagen Street Food.

We should pause here for a moment to note that in neither of these crowd shots do you see anyone under the age of, say, twenty. There's a reason for that. On this trip I have learned that when it comes to the EYO (and I'm assuming he represents his kind fairly faithfully here) there is one and only one quality one looks for in food: familiarity. The worst thing that's been seen before is to be preferred over the best thing that's novel. 

Unfortunately (for me) and fortunately (for every other non-EYO), familiarity was not really what the vendors here were targeting. 

I always thought the bride was supposed to be the last to arrive.
Not this one. I'd bet there were hours before this wedding
was scheduled to start.

It is not every couple that rocks their wardrobe quite the way this one did.

So now I see the appeal of Copenhagen.

Hans Christian Anderson.
His knee is shiny because everyone sits on it to
get their picture taken.