Tired. So very, very tired……
Our final full day in Copenhagen and we’d decided a little earlier in the week to stop the intensive geocaching and just have a day of touristy stuff. It turned out that it was the day of a carnival up in the city centre. The first touristy thing we did was to get out of bed an hour later. 9 am was plenty early enough for what we wanted, and the hotel breakfast was still well stocked (and quite busy). 
Is this Rio?
We ventured out of the hotel and caught the metro up to Kongens Nytorv, as ever. When we got there, we were greeted by a veritable cacophony and a buzzing throng. There was a carnival, and many of the participants were gathered in Kongens Nytorv. Combining that with it being a weekend day in the summer meant the place was busy. Busy busy, in fact. It’s a good job we weren’t planning any serious geocaching around town. This many people attending a carnival would make that a challenge. So we planned a day of visiting Copenhagen’s more touristy stuff, plus a couple of occasional caches that I’d missed on the previous days.
First up, we elbowed our way through the carnival goers along the main shopping street and found ourselves a tacky souvenir shop. I bought some tacky souvenirs. Well, mainly, a couple of bottle openers. We have an unofficial collection of tacky touristy bottle openers. We’d struggled to find any at previous places we’d been, but here we found multiple shops selling all manner of them. Tick.
How High?
I’d noticed the previous night that it’s apparently possible to climb a number of the church towers in central Copenhagen. On Thursday we’d been up the tower at the Christiansborg Palace and away back on the previous Sunday we’d walked up the Round Tower at Trinitatis Kirke, but there were several others we fancied. The first we passed was the St. Nicholas Church, which is not now a church. We popped in to ask and I was initially disappointed when they said we couldn’t go up until 1 pm (it was 11 am at the time). Consulting with Ami outside, we decided to go for it and I went back inside. At that point they told me that they only open the tower once a month, and only do a tour at 1 pm. So that was a stroke of luck, but it meant we had two hours to kill.
Helligaandskirken was supposedly another we could climb, but it was all fenced off for renovation work. It was a similar story at Vor Frue Kirke. We could have gone there except they had a wedding on, so no visitors. So it looked like we were only going to get to climb the St. Nicholas Church. 
At which point….
Near the Vor Frue Kirke there was a geocache that wasn’t accessible the previous time we were there. It was inside a toy shop, and the shop was closed last time we passed. This time it was open. Hopefully we weren’t too suspicious, because it took us ages to find it. The hint was quite expressive but didn’t give much hint about size. I was looking for something rather larger than it turned out to be. So, back at the plot, we went into the St. Nicholas Church and made ourselves known. We were asked to wait in the lobby for our host. It turns out that we were the only people on the tour. So we had a very knowledgeable guide take us up beyond the clock chamber and up to the open walkway.
As with most Copenhagen churches, the open platform is only halfway up the spire, but it was still quite a way up. To get there we wound our way up a series of wooden staircases, with one stone bit. Some bits were more “ladder” than “stairs”, and some bits were a tight squeeze, even though we’d left our bags in a locker at the bottom. We probably spent half an hour up top taking photos and speaking to our guide. The view of Copenhagen from the top was pretty good. At the end, we walked downstairs again and had a quick shufty round the gallery that now occupies the church. There was some interesting artwork.
Marmokirken
Away back last Sunday we’d had a quick look at the Marmorkirken but couldn’t go in because it was shut. So we thought we’d go for another look today. We walked over from St. Nicholas Church rather slowly. Both of us were tired of walking but it seemed wasteful to take the metro for one station. When we got there, we failed again. There was a wedding, so it was shut to the public. That was a bit disappointing, especially having walked over. So at this point we decided it was time for lunch. 
Don’t Mind if I Do
From Marmorkirken we took the metro to Gammel Strand (“Old Beach”). It’s been a while since there was a beach there, but it does provide access to streets packed with cafes. We sat at a place a couple of streets back from the canal and had what was probably the nicest lunch of the trip. There was beer involved, but the food would have been good without that. We could still hear the distant sounds of carnival while we sat.
An Afternoon at the Museum
The National Museum of Denmark is a fairly large place to the west of Slotsholmen. We’d passed it on Thursday and decided to go back for a look. On reflection we wished we’d allocated a bit more time. It was 4 pm (nearly) when we arrived, and we were advised on entering that they were closing at 5pm. That left us an hour, and that, in turn, meant a fairly high-speed walk around. We started on the ground floor with the ancient history of Denmark. It was all about the arrival of humans after the last ice age and the very early development of culture there. The ground floor is laid out as a chronological journey, which I think makes a lot of sense. It sets everything in context.
The higher floors have a varied collection of non-Danish artefacts, and then we found ourselves back into the timeline, but in the 20th Century. Still interesting, but by this time we were more or less out of time. That was a shame, because even though I’m not normally a museum person, I could have spent a whole day in there.
That’ll Do
And with that, we were done. Neither of us was hungry, so we didn’t want to stay in town to get dinner. And anyway, we were both really tired again. So we took a slow and slightly painful walk back to Kongens Nytorv for the last time, and got the metro home. Thankfully the carnival had finished and everyone had gone home. When we were back at the hotel, we still weren’t hungry, so we just packed our bags and went to bed. We had a lunchtime appointment at the airport. 
Enough
And so we finally reached our last day in Copenhagen. We didn’t do enough of note to be worth a post of its own. So here is a little addendum. We scheduled breakfast for around 10am, but I was awake by 6, and I was already packed. So I got up and went for a walk to grab a final few caches while Ami got out of bed. I walked one block or so over to Kastrupgård, where there was a nice little art park containing some outdoor sculptures and a set of lab caches. There were a couple of puzzles nearby too, and that took me to 7 finds. That was enough, so I mooched back and met Ami for some breakfast.
Flying Home
So one final trip on the metro down to the airport and then a relatively quick check-in. We had the best part of two hours to kill and Copenhagen isn’t as big an airport as Heathrow. So we wandered around a bit and I changed my remaining cash Kroner directly to Euros ready for the July trip to France. Ami wanted a snack, so we found a coffee shop. And then we were ready.
The plane home was more or less on time and my car was waiting for me when we got there. The drive home was dull and depressing, as they usually are on the way back from a holiday. I’d logged over 500 caches and we’d visited various bits of Denmark and Sweden that I’d either not been to before, or had forgotten. It was a bit pricey, but not as bad as I expected, and everywhere we ate was good quality. So a top trip.
