Last real day in Denmark and last day with my parents. Today we went up north by train to a small town with a huge palace/castle that was once a royal residence. It was really impressive in a lot of ways, though unfortunately a large portion of it was covered in scaffolding as a result of some rather unsightly repair work they were doing. The interior was completely coated in artwork and artifacts from Danish nobility throughout the years. Unfortunately, there wasn't always very much explanation of what the pieces were, and they were often just similar portraits of the same few princes or other members of the family. The castle itself was beautifully decorated with amazingly detailed ceilings in almost every room. It's large, and I suspect we didn't see all that it had to offer, but I think that's ok since stuff started to get pretty redundant before we made it through the entire thing. The castle grounds were extremely nice as well.

After failing to go further north by missing our train, we headed right back to Copenhagen. The Danish countryside isn't especially exciting, as it turns out. Once back in the city we saw a few more sites, like this old fort that reminded me a lot of Castle Island, and the nearby Little Mermaid statue that's an inexplicably popular tourist attraction. I don't really get why anyone cares to see it so much since it's not in an especially attractive location and it isn't especially grand or impressive in its own right either, but nonetheless there was a large group of people waiting in line to take a picture with it.

I leave for Stockholm tomorrow around noon, so that means this is it for my Denmark experience. All things told, it's a cool city, but not the most exciting one I've been to. It's very picturesque, but there isn't as much to do or see as I'd thought there might be. Apparently much of the city burned down a few hundred years ago, so it lacks some of the more historic character that something like Brussels has. There are still a few attractions that I've left unexplored here; I can't claim to have a total or comprehensive understanding of what it has to offer, but I feel like I've seen enough to be ready to move on. A definite recommend for a weekend as part of a longer trip, but perhaps not too much more. Honestly, that's how I've felt about most of the cities I've visited thus far.

I finally bit the bullet and did some actual planning today. The cheapest flights I could get around the end of the week were out of Stockholm on Friday night, and I'm flying direct to Geneva, Switzerland. I'd have liked to try taking the ferry across the Baltic, but it seems that flights from Helsinki are so much more limited and expensive that it doesn't really make any sense to do that and then immediately leave. I also could've visited Norway and flown out of Oslo for a similar price, but Oslo would've been many more hours and I frankly don't think it's worth it at the moment, especially since I really want to see so much of that country on a different trip down the line. I'm excited to see Switzerland, though I'm not sure I'll really be able to explore a lot of the country or do much while there since it's so unfriendly to budgets. From there I'm planning a bit of an Italian campaign - there are many moderately sized Italian cities that cluster around one another in the north, so I think I'll be able to hop somewhat easily between them until I reach Venice in the east. From there, back up to central Europe for a little bit before I begin a Balkan leg of things.

Not sure exactly what I'm planning for Stockholm since it's a city that I frankly know so little about. I'm meeting Anton Andersson, one of my Swedish COVID lockdown roommates in NZ, for dinner on Tuesday, and I'm hoping he has some insight. I'd like to get outside the cities a little bit too, since I enjoyed doing that today. I think the Swedish countryside is probably a lot more attractive than the Danish one due to its much more impressive forests, lakes, and mountains. Possibly the trees will be turning? Anyway, it's about 6 hours of train travel tomorrow and then I check into what seems like an excellent hostel at an excellent rate. Really looking forward to this one.