A Weekend in Copenhagen :)

I love Copenhagen.  It’s as simple as that.  I really can’t explain why—but I may or may not have enjoyed this place more than the other cities we’ve visited. 

Part of it is probably because of how smoothly our trip went.  We really had no major problems- or even any minor problems.  My friend Jason served his mission for our church there and he was basically the key to making this trip to amazing!  He helped us plan it all out, and even taught us a few Danish words :)

Oh, and we had a sweet hotel :)

We started the trip off in the best possible way: visiting the Copenhagen Temple.  We had to walk past this scary, dark, deserted road to get there… Caity kept saying things to freak us out… we almost died. 

Just kidding.  No we didn’t.  We eventually made it to the temple and it was AMAZING.  (I will be using that word a lot this entry.)  We wanted to go in so bad.  I never wanted to go into a temple so bad… but unfortunately it was closed (we went at like 11:00 at night).   But definitely worth it.

The next day was fantastic.  We went out to the city Hillerød where the Fredriksborg Castle is.  Hillerød was a beautiful little city built right along the lake.  It was such a nice day out so we got ice cream and walked around the lake and then went to the castle.  The highlight of the castle was the room with the Carl Bloch paintings in it—they were beautiful.  He is such a talented painter, and his pictures are truly inspired. 

So Beautiful :)

We came back to the city after this, and went to see the Little Mermaid statue.  The coastline of Denmark was beautiful.  It was so picturesque with all the boats, the water, and docks.  I couldn’t get enough of it :)  The statue was… uhm… as LDS man we met later at the Church of Our Lady would describe, quite “pornographique” haha.  But it was cool to see.

Afterwards, we went to meet with my dad’s friend Christian Stadil.  He was a really interesting guy.  Him and his dad own 5 different businesses- one of which is Hummel.  Hummel is a sport company in Demark that Christian started on his own and designed.  He tried to get it started in the US and got Madonna and Pink to wear, but it didn’t take off too well unfortunately.  He also told us about his new books that he has being released.  Oh, and he’s on an upcoming reality show in Denmark called “Stars in a Castle.”  So we’ll have to watch for him on that!  It was so fun to meet him—he definitely has an interesting life to say the least! 

He recommended that we go to this place nearby for dinner- and it was delicious!  I got a pork chop with mashed potatoes, peas, and a super yummy sauce over it all.  Oh, and the butter was AMAZING.  Caity and I couldn’t stop eating the bread… with the butter…

The next day was our last day unfortunately, so we got up early so we could pack everything in.

We started by going to the Church of Our Lady.  The Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen houses the original Christus statue, (the one that our church models the Christus after) and statues of the original 12 apostles line the walls.  President Packer gave a talk in 2008 entitled “The Twelve” in which he talked about this church.  When President Kimball was the prophet, he had all the apostles go with him to see this church.  In it, they talked of the keys that the statue of Peter holds in his hands and how that symbolizes the keys of the priesthood which they as prophets hold.  Elder Packer describes it as thus:“President Kimball pointed to those keys and explained what they symbolized. Then, in an act I shall never forget, he turned to President Benthin and with unaccustomed firmness pointed his finger at him and said,  ‘I want you to tell everyone in Denmark that I hold the keys! We hold the real keys, and we use them every day.’”

President Kimball turned to the custodian who was in the church with them and said, pointing to the statues: “These are the dead Apostles.” Pointing to [Elder Packer], he said, “Here we have the living Apostles. Elder Packer is an Apostle. Elder Thomas S. Monson and Elder L. Tom Perry are Apostles, and I am an Apostle. We are the living Apostles.”

It was a truly incredible experience to read this talk and then go and see the statues and be in the place where this story took place and where the apostles had once been.  My favorite part of the statue was noticing the relief on the ceiling above Christ.  It shows the last moments of Christ’s life: Pontius Pilate washing his hands, Christ being mocked, and him carrying the cross.  After looking across these images, you look down and see the resurrected Christ.  The focus is not on the death, but the Resurrection.  It is absolutely amazing.

After this we walked along the main shopping street- Strøget.  I went into the Royal Copenhagen Porcelain store and got a beautiful pitcher with the traditional blue flower :) 

We walked around for a bit, randomly stumbled upon the changing of the guards, did some grocery store hoppin’ and found some cabaret sauce.  And of course, walked down Nyhavn.

 We got a tour of the Marble Church in which we walked to the very top of the dome.  Only the guard told us to go up first and lead the group… uhm yeah. It was terrifying.  There were no lights, creepy rafters, and steep steep stairs.  Caity made me go first, because she thought there would be a murderer hiding behind every door.  Luckily for me, there wasn’t.  But we made it to the top and got an amazing view of the city!  The birds-eye-view of this city is very unique because (as Jason pointed out to me later) there are no sky-scrapers.  I guess there is a law in the city that no building can be taller than the church steeples.  So as you look out, you can see a ton of steeples poking up over the little buildings.  It was a really neat view. 

After we did this, it was time to head back to catch the train for the airport.  I was so sad to leave and was trying to take it all in before we had to leave.  I have come to the conclusion that Copenhagen is one of the most underrated cities- no one really understood why we wanted to go.  Even our professor here was like “Copenhagen?!  What are you going there for??”  But I really really loved it.  It was such a great city, and I loved every minute that I had there. :)