Journal no. 3

 Vor Frelsers Kirke, Our Saviour's Church


This beautiful church was built in the 1680s. The neighbourhood it's situated in is quiet and full of houses, but the tower itself is a sight to behold from the canal and beyond.

We went early to climb up the tower as the canal boat guide was saying that there were so many people when she visited it, she was stuck on the narrow stairs for very long.
The beauty and charm of climbing the tower is that it is completely old school. All stairs, meant for the few people who actually need to go up to maintain the gold gilt and bells. So the stairs are just wide enough for 1.5 people to use at the same time.
Not for hoards of tourists.

There it is!
We rushed there at 10 + am and the bemused attendant checked our Copenhagen Card. He mentioned that there were 400 steps.
Awesome.
There wasn't many people around but when we encountered a few people coming down, we realised exactly what the canal guide was saying.
It's really inconvenient to wait for them / give way / etc. on the narrow stairs.
Of course, we begun with wide stairs to get to the top section.

Intricate clockwork.

The 1.5 or 1 person wide stairs.
I was climbing with a DSLR camera around my neck and knocked it on the stairs various times since the oak steps got quite high, and sometimes we needed our hands to climb for balance.
Everyone was kinda nice in the morning. Awkward smiles as we passed.

There was a ridiculously tight crawl space / ladder hole from the interior to get out to see the view.
But damn, this view is something else.

Unobstructed, and cute buildings for miles around.

Not sure how high we were above ground, but it was slightly scary.
Exhilarating!

There were some people up on the copper spire stairs, which wound around the spire in 4 twists.
It was so glorious to be able to go up on it.

This was near the very last step at the top of the spire.
They just got tinier and tinier.
Got breathless with excitement, it was so cool!

And then of course we had to go back down the same way we got up.
On the way down, there were definitely more visitors, so we got backed up a bit.
The taller tourists bumped their heads on the low beams, but they were good natured about it.
I think my mom chatted to the Americans behind us. Haha.

Since we were in Christianshavn, we walked around for a while and went into a nice looking bakery called Lagkagehuset (Lagkagehuset v/ Ole Christoffersen), where I accessed the internet for the first time since we got to Copenhagen.
Then I saw the messages Airbnb hostess sent me because she was worried that I didn't get her keys. Ooops.
Anyway, this bakery offers delights like the pastries above, and some fancy ones, and some hot young staff, and counter seating with a view of the busy street outside and canal pedestrian bridge.

We went back to the city center and checked out the inside of Rådhuspladsen, which is the City Hall Square.
Yup, looks like a city hall square.

There're some nice details on the stairway arch though. Folksy tiles.