Not finished yet but ready to go!

So I still haven't completely unloaded my vacation pictures (oops) but I've already booked my next trip.  Did you know I love being in cold places at cold times?  No? Well apparently I do, since I'm going to see more of Scandinavia in November.  Stay tuned!

Copenhagen and Hamburg - Day 3: Goodbye and Hello

I have been back for almost two weeks and haven't finished my blogging. I stopped after two days because I was doing work and also had horrible insomnia. Hopefully my memory is fairly intact.

On this day, I was exploring Copenhagen before my flight to Hamburg. I visited Rosenborg Castle, Amalienborg Castle, and the Round Tower.

Rosenborg Castle was the older of the two. I spent a long time studying everything and imagining how life there must have been.

The digs

The return of the selfie stick! Since there's not a ton of Asian tourists here, I didn't see many of them being broken out.

One of the Royal Thrones

This room is baller status. I feel like this looks like a rap star's bedroom.

Another Royal Throne.. my computer chair will never look as good as it did before I saw this

Probably not as warm as my beanie.

What the? I take weird pictures when I'm sleep deprived.

I'm so tall!

Amalienborg Castle was more modern and much smaller than Rosenborg Castle. However, I spent a lot of time reading all of the captions, since it was really interesting learning about modern monarchy with currently existing royalty.

This reminds me of that I Love Lucy episode when she hides under a bear rug.

Oops - I realized when taking this picture that I was standing in his path.

Dresses

Reminds me of Game of Thrones

I spent a really long time looking at this royal wedding photo. They labeled each person and it's so funny that it's official and so many people are looking away or blinking.

The Round Tower was a dizzying experience that tapped into my fear of heights. It made me think of Tangled, in that there was a round tower but good thing I didn't have to climb up through someone's long braid.  Although that might have been interesting too.  When I got to the top, I felt my knees buckle and taking pictures terrified me because I imagined dropping my phone and it shattering into a million pieces.

Climbing up to the tower

The spiral staircase. It was so steep and I was scurred.

A view from the tower

In the evening, I flew to Hamburg and arrived late.  My first German meal was the fine cuisine of KFC (for the first time in forever) and a random German guy tapped on the window and pointed to my burger and asked if I was enjoying it by giving a thumbs up with a questioning look on his face.  I attribute this to either the scarcity of Asians (although I saw more later in the day) or possibly inhaling my food - I'm not sure which it was.  I did walk around the street a little and there was nothing to see except sad ladies of the night who were bundled up in their winter best.

My hostel experience was much less pleasant than in Copenhagen - the shower was hideously tiny, my bunk mate had an overpowering stench, and the window wouldn't open all the way.  But you get what you pay for.

Here's some other random pictures

These happy faces were so cute.

I think this is a church in Copenhagen. I realized that my head/beanie is the same shape.

This reminds me of a bluetooth headset

Classy.. the poop is the Danish flag

You know how I like oversized things. This was at the Copenhagen airport.

And a big coffee cup too that dispenses coffee.

Copenhagen and Hamburg - Day 2: Cold-penhagen!

My feet are about to fall off! According to FitBit, I walked 9.76 miles today. Lest you think I'm wasting away (but for reals, no one thinks that), I had something much like jalapeno poppers from Burger King (6 for $3 - couldn't resist!) and a $30 meal that was really just burger, fries, and a coke.

When I was leaving the hostel this morning, some genius propped their bike against the door I exit from.  So when I opened the door, the bike fell and I awkwardly lifted the bike (it was pretty big and had a child seat behind the regular seat) and moved it. If I saw myself, I would have laughed. If you think of a comedic movie where a small, uncoordinated person tries to lift something, that would be me.

I did a lot today. This morning I walked to Christianshvn where I found Christiania and Pusher Street aka "The Green Light District".  It's a strange shady ghost town. I took pictures in Christiania but outside Pusher Street because there's a million signs that say no photos. Maybe I was too early but not much was going on and I'm a little offended that no one asked if I wanted to buy drugs. I mean, I didn't but I would still like to be asked. And they're drug pushers - they have one job - sell drugs.. and you're not going to sell any if you don't ask random people walking by if they want any!  The closest I got was when I first entered Christiania and a guy asked if I spoke English and then asked if the police were outside (weird, right?).  I told him no but he didn't even sell me any drugs.  (I'm pretty sure my mom reads this so maybe I should take this part out. Well, hugs, not drugs, mom.. so if you don't want me to buy drugs in foreign countries then open up those arms!)

Then I walked around looking like a total tourist with a map and taking random pictures on the street while bikers and drivers look on.  (Solo traveling has made me much more shameless.)  I found my way to the National Museum.  There was a cool temporary exhibit about fur. I wandered around the other displays - my favorite was the one about toys.

A (fake?) blood-covered (fake?) fur coat.  Did not want to try on.

A fur coat Makayla might like - Mickey and Minnie are on it!

You're welcome - you get the point.

I'm not sure why this vest was part of the fur exhibit (clearly I missed the entire point of it) but I was wearing the same (not exact) one. Probably not a good sign for my sartorial choices.

Infrared camera - that's me! Probably the hunting part of the exhibit.

I really just took this photo for my mom. If she were here, she'd say this is my friend. Yes, I inherited my knack for spouting out random, nonsensical statements from her (or my dad.. he's weird too). Thanks, ma!

The ultimate guilt trip.  "Sorry I'm wearing part of your family."

I thought this staircase was cool. It reminds me of a bird cage.

My favorite painting in the museum.

The creepiest corner.

The toy exhibit had stuffed animals danging from the ceiling. To me, this seemed creepy. Are my captions horrible? Probably.

I don't even know which exhibit this was part of.

Then I found Tivoli, which was so sad because it was closed.

This is the beginning (but not the end) of what it looks like when I don't get my way.  This is followed by hyperventilating, screaming, kicking, etc. It gets bad.

After that, it took me forever but I finally found the famous Little Mermaid statue.

Since it took me so long to get there, I was enjoying the statue. And then.. a lot of Chinese tourists came by and it got hectic.

Next, I discovered the Design Museum of Denmark, which was small but pretty cool.

Big chairs because.. why not?

From there, I had the aforementioned pricey meal at Hot Buns Gastro Burgers (ironic that eating
there results in your buns not being hot) and came back to the hostel. If this doesn't sound like a lot, I was out for about 10 hours today and it took me a long time to find where I was going (Asian). Here's some pictures! I'm not sure what I'll do tomorrow.. I can't really go shopping yet because I'm flying to Hamburg tomorrow and lugging souvenirs from a place I'll be back in a few days isn't ideal. Oh well!

PS I've had the randomest songs in my head today. Here's my playlist..
1 - When You're Alone from Raising Hope
2 - Fossil and Footprints - this song I sang in elementary school (was it kindergarten?) for an assembly when I was dressed up in an adorable dinosaur costume and had a bowl cut
3 - This Hand is Your Hand from Friends (you know.. this hand is your hand.. oh wait it's my hand.. no wait that's your hand..)
4 - Friend Like Me from Aladdin

Here's some other random pictures:

Yup!

It IS a good day!

Make space on the mantle, mom! This is your souvenir!

This is pretty cool. You can flip the little tiles to spell out stuff. 

You HAVE to smile at the #HAPPY WALL.

Even their trash cans are well designed! (This is actually white, not pink. That'd be too cute.)

This fake Mickey Mouse was taking pictures with kids and I really wanted to take a picture with him (for the blog) but I didn't have any DKK and I doubt fake Mickey would grant a photo op out of the goodness of his heart.

Christmas decorations on sale in February - love it!

Hans Christian Andersen statue - he is probably not appreciating this.