Europe, 5 June 2012 - Helsingor

Today's destination is Helsingor, a city of both real and literary history. Helsingor (or Elsinore in English) is straight north of Copenhagen on the northwest corner of the peninsula. From there it is a very short ferry ride across the strait to Helsingborg, Sweden, a ferry ride we did not take. Making this more interesting for us, was that we had sailed through this strait twice on the cruise, once in each direction, and could clearly identify the castle and cities. Now we were back for a closer exploration.

1699

Buxtehude was here (really!)

In the Cloister

Cloister Organ

 The town is a very interesting Medieval city. Here in Scandinavia brick is a much more prominent building material than stone, so many large buildings as churches, cathedrals, and town halls are brick. So it was at our first stop, Sanct Mariae Karmelite monastery. It had a simple, beautiful cloister. The church was major, looking like a cathedral and had all the usual appointments; altar piece, organ, apse, etc. Wandering the town brought us to the Cathedral, Sact Olai. Same story here, except the organ was new and of a very modern visual design. It would have been great to hear some of these instruments.

Cathedral Organ

Cloister Church ceiling

Cloister Church

Cathedral

We found a small café for lunch. The waiter's English was not good, and obviously our Danish was worse. Even Ron, who knows some Danish, had trouble communicating. The food was good, just not exactly what we expected.

Helsingor Castle

After lunch Ron headed home and left us in Helsingor to explore the castle, Kronborg. This is the castle we had seen sailing by on the cruise. It is well situated at the narrowest point of the strait. And may be more interesting in some ways because it is not the usual sort of extremely elaborate royal castle or palace we saw most places. Its other claim to fame is that it is "Hamlet's Castle" made famous by Shakespeare. So it may be more famous as a fictional castle than a real one.

Castle Defense

The castle itself is a square surrounding a large open area. It has a large number of auxiliary buildings around it, and is approached by crossing water a couple of times including a more traditional moat. Dick could not pass the opportunity to climb the observation tower, a large square on one corner of the building. There are a couple taller towers which look more like traditional castle towers.

Karen crossing the
Castle Moat

View of town from tower

 

Helsingor street

After spending a couple of hours touring the castle, we headed back into town to catch the train back to Hellerup. It was a pleasant walk around the edge of the old city to the train station. We bought our tickets and easily found the train for our return. It's an easy walk from the station back to Ron & Vonnie's house, where we had another quiet evening.