Heather came to visit!

SO. What been going on since travel break finally ended? Well Easter weekend was basically recovery weekend. Classes started up the Tuesday after Easter. I accompanied Anna and Caitlin when they went to rent bikes (in lieu of getting transportation passes). I almost beat them back to DIS (on foot) on their first bike ride in Copenhagen. That Wednesday, I went with my Danish politics class to Parliament (where we had a short lecture/discussion from the woman who is the chair of the foreign affairs committee). We were meant to have a tour of Christiansborg but apparently our group was too large and they wouldn't split us up. Then we had a break for about an hour and a half, and then went to the Copenhagen Police Department. We had a short tour of their building, then a talk about how they handle demonstrators/protests, and then a quick demonstration/tour from the riot squad (they got into their riot gear in well under five minutes, and then they showed us some of the weapons). On Thursday I went with Anna over to Amalienborg to watch the royal family wave from the balcony because it was the queen's birthday. I think that weekend was relatively uneventful. Had to pull an all-nighter on Monday the 20th in order to write a paper for Danish politics (got an A, though).

Then on Thursday, Heather arrived! I met her at the airport around three, we got her a klippekort, and then we took the Metro into the city center. Heather got a pastry from Skt. Peder's and we went and relaxed in a park for awhile, as the weather was beautiful. (In fact, the weather has been absolutely amazing ever since I returned from Krakow.) We headed back home and Heather met the host family, and then we had dinner, conversation, etc. I was amused that my host mother has trouble saying "Heather" -- it's something about the soft "th" sound -- but Caroline could say it perfectly. Heather and I ended up hanging out and watching The Office and some other stuff online, then turned in for the night.

I skipped classes on Friday to make the most of it. We planned on doing a bunch of stuff and going to Carlsberg today. We ended up taking the train out to Østerport, walking through some of the grounds of the Kastellet, and over to the Little Mermaid. No adornments this time! Then, we walked on and found the Gefion Fountain, which I had not seen turned on yet and was pretty cool. Heather got a hot dog with everything on it from a pølsevogn -- I've not even had a hot dog from one of the carts yet, but oh well. We then walked along the water all the way down to Amalienborg, where there was also a cool fountain switched on, and briefly into the church that's right across the way. Its dome is pretty impressive but photos were frowned upon -- I took a couple of illicit ones of the altar. We then made our way down to Nyhavn, and ended up getting some smørrebrød at a little restaurant. Afterwards we made our way to the Round Tower; it is what it sounds like, and there are (almost) no stairs inside, it's just a winding incline up to an observation platform, so you can see a nice view of the skyline, and even Sweden! We got the first of several bagel sandwiches, ate them, and made our way over to Tivoli. We decided to suck it up and pay for the price of the multi-ride wristband on top of the entry fee, instead of paying singly for each ride we wanted to do. So, in order to get the best bang for our buck (or the most bang for our 285kr), we basically went on all the major rides. None of them are particulary big, so Heather somehow managed to drag me on to the rollercoasters and this ridiculous ride that I think we both ended up hating that spun around and then twisted you up and down and was completely crazy. But we did the freefall ride and bumper cars and the giant swings. The couple of really tall rides give you great views of the city as well. We stayed for quite some time, as there was to be a concert; we listened to about half of it before we decided we were cold enough, and headed for home!