Castle!

It's been a crazy week so far! I hit the ground running in terms of research, so I've been in the ancient lab every day this week since Sunday. I have a lot to do, research-wise, but unfortunately the ancient lab is packed this week so I've just been fitting in time where I can. All lab scheduling is done via Google Calendar, and this is what this week looks like:

So my weekend will be spent in lab. It's not so bad - I'm excited to get started! Most of this week I've been training with Nathan, Hannes, and Inge on all of their protocols to be able to process my samples. After today, I will be trained on pretty much everything in the ancient lab and then my schedule is my own. I'm hoping to get a lot done this weekend - my goal is to front-load my work so I can spend my last few days enjoying the city.

Yesterday, though, I decided to take the afternoon off. There was no room on the calendar for me anyway, and it was a beautiful day outside! Because Denmark is rainy for most of the year, it's said that when the weather is nice everyone just takes off from work. I can see why! After three days of dreary drizzle-y weather, the sunshine and cool breeze was fantastic. I decided to go visit Christiansborg Castle, which is where the royal family still hosts most of their events.

On my way there, I found the shopping district! On my walks to lab every day, the streets and sidewalks are fairly empty, so I was surprised to see such big crowds of people. This is definitely the tourist area of town - most things are in English and there are people with cameras everywhere. Instead of heading to the castle directly, I wandered around the area first. There were lots of really neat buildings - I especially liked this church, with the copper spire. As it turns out, it's no longer a church, but has been converted into a contemporary art museum.

The castle is on its own little island, surrounded by these canals. There are canal tours that take you around the city - maybe I'll go on one one of these days!

The main attraction of the castle is the Reception Rooms - they are gorgeous. The rooms are still used for meetings, dinners and the annual New Year's Eve gala. I was really impressed by the beauty of the rooms and the level of detail, down to the mosaics in the walls and the carvings on the ceilings.

The main event, though, are these tapestries. They were made as a gift for the current Danish queen's fiftieth birthday, and were hung in the Great Hall in 2000. There are seventeen in all, and they illustrate the history of Denmark from the viking age to the present. They're incredibly intricate, but I think the part that's most astounding is the color. Here's an analogy for you: if traditional tapestries have 256 colors, these have millions. I could have stayed in that room for hours, just looking at all of the tapestries - there are huge coffee-table books that are dedicated to explaining every part of every tapestry.

And of course, we can't forget the throne room!

I also visited the ruins below the castle - there have been multiple iterations of the Christiansborg Castle, and this current iteration was built on the ruins of two previous castles. It was cool seeing how the style of the buildings changed over time, and you could see the old walls underneath the castle floor.

Christiansborg also has a high tower, and you can ride an elevator up to the top to see a great view of the city. I took lots of pictures up here, too.

I would say that my first (half-) day of sightseeing was a great success! Hopefully, the short break will be enough to keep me going through a weekend of work.