Day 23 - Friday May 12, 2017 - Copenhagen
It looks dry and much brighter outside this morning, so hopefully the forecast of a nice day will prove true. The plan is to visit the Carlsberg Brewery and then the Dansh Design Museum.
After breakfast, we eventually head to the train station; the S-train we need runs every 20 minutes but there is no point catching anything earlier than the 9.50 (Carlsberg opens at 10) so we go and have coffee. That done, we get our ticket from the machine and head down to track 12. The station we need is helpfully called ‘Carlsberg’ so no difficulty with the ticket machine today (well, at least for now). It’s not clear whether you’re supposed to validate the ticket in some way but (in addition to some fancy looking card readers that the locals use to validate their passes) there are some ancient looking yellow machines on the platform with a slot that would seem likely to take the ticket we have. However, the only English on the machine refers to 10-ticket strips so, given the risk that the machine might simply swallow our ticket, we do nothing. Shortly after, a newly-arrived fellow passenger asks if we know how to validate their ticket. What, us? Do we look like we know what we’re doing?
The train arrives and we travel the two stops to Carlsberg Station and walk up to the old brewery, now converted to their visitor centre. Although we’re not entirely alone, there’s not exactly a lot of fellow visitors. We spend an hour or so following the self-guided tour, stopping to admire the 20,000+ (filled) beer bottle collection from all around the world (rather impressive) and reading all the explanatory material on the way. A walk through the stables and then out to the courtyard for the obligatory beer tasting included in the admission price. It has indeed turned out to be a beautiful morning so we sit in the sunshine and drink our beer.
We head back to the station to catch the train the two stops back to Central Station and then the three stops on to Osterport, one stop further than we went yesterday. After yesterday, we’re ready for the ticket machine because we know it’s Østerport and not Osterport but the machine still manages to leave us flapping. Although it looks identical to the machines in Central Station, it only takes coins or cards so the fifty kroner note I have ready is useless as there’s nowhere to stick it. Fortunately, the credit card works without any issue. Interestingly, the outbound train we took to get here and the return train we’re now waiting for both use the same platform. The outbound train arrives and disappears off in to the distance, presumably switching to a different track, before our inbound train arrives a few minutes later.
We get off at Østerport, the nearest station to the Danish Design Museum. I say ‘nearest’ although it doesn’t appear on the map to be that near so perhaps ‘least furthest away’ might be more accurate. As it turns out, it’s not that far and is, in fact, a very pleasant walk alongside a lake through what appears to be a fairly affluent neighborhood. Lots of geese and their goslings enjoying the sunshine by the water. On a day like today with the sun shining, Copenhagen puts on a much more appealing face than it did in the last couple of days of grey drizzle.
The Design Museum is excellent. I’m not sure what the building used to be but it’s an older style building built in a large square surrounding a pleasant garden. You essentially walk all the way round the square, ending up (more or less) where you started, though inevitably in the shop and cafe. We stop in the cafe and sit outside in the garden with our hot chocolate. The Collection could perhaps be best described as ‘furniture and fashion’ but has a lot of interesting and stylish pieces. I am particularly taken by a small table, the top of which has four triangular flaps that fold outwards; at first, you think ‘that doesn’t work’ as the hinges of each flap aren’t really going to support the weight of the flap — until you realize that you’re supposed to rotate the top of the table 45 degrees so that the flaps are supported by the table’s legs.
We walk back from the Design Museum, passing on the way the ‘Marble Church’ which Anne-Margaret had spotted on the map. A beautiful space, where we sit quietly for a while. The buildings adjacent to it, which had the look of apartments, were certainly appealing and, one suspects, come with a price tag to match.
As we head back, we pass the quay at Nyhavn, with its line of restaurants and the more-or-less-boarded-up-while-we-build-the-metro-station Kongens Nytorv square. Far more people around today and much more activity than before. Inevitably, we end up heading down the main shopping street, past George Jensen etc., before stopping in the cake shop for hot chocolate and a pastry. We buy a couple of sandwiches for later and stop in the supermarket by the hotel for a bottle of wine to have with them this evening. We have a 7.30 am train to Amsterdam tomorrow so will have to be packed and ready to go fairly early in the morning.