We started the day with some excellent pastries from a local bakery, including a Danish danish (called something different here). Baked goods seem to be a pretty important thing around here judging by the frequency and quality of such shops. We went over to this really cool church with a large spire that had a corkscrew shaped stairway running all the way to the top. We couldn't get in for a little while, so we walked over to the nearby neighborhood of Christiania. This is a self-declared independent "Freetown" that ignores much of Danish law and gets away with it. Cannabis products are illegal throughout Denmark, but somehow nobody cares in this one small section of the capital city, where you can buy anything you want. It's clearly influenced heavily by tourism, but it's notably different from the rest of the city - much of the area is totally unpaved dirt tracks, there are very few cars, much more green space, and the buildings are often these small metal-roofed shacks. It appears to be an entirely different and much less wealthy country. Apparently there's the occasional issue with gang violence, but our time there was totally peaceful. Pretty cool that something like this can coexist within a city that's otherwise totally different.

When we got back to the church at the next available time, we went up. It was cool and had lots of elephant symbology for some reason. The climb to the top was not especially comfortable and reminded me in a lot of ways of St Paul's in London. Once you got out to the exterior platform, there was a really great view of the city. It was nice to be able to place all the parts of the city that I'd already been to and reference them against one another in my mental map of the city. We then walked up the spiraling staircase to the top of the spire. The stairs were brass (?) and narrowed the further up we went, and there was a wait at the top because they narrowed so much that only a few people could be in the final section at once. You could definitely feel the spire shaking a little either with people or wind, but I wasn't bothered by the height as much as I sometimes am. The view of the city didn't improve that much as we went further up, but it was still a really cool experience to climb up.

Later, we walked around aimlessly some more. We saw some parks, including the botanical gardens and some of the grounds of some castle. It's a very consistently nice city with a lot more diversity to it than Amsterdam, despite the other familiarities. I will say that it doesn't seem to be the most exciting city or happening city of all time. It has a similarly non-historic vibe to Amsterdam, which is just as strange since it's an extremely old city. There isn't an incredible amount going on here or in Denmark in general, really. Tomorrow we're seeing the National Museum and the main royal castle, which both look pretty interesting.