a ride to remember

during my last weekend in copenhagen, louise, my sra, and a group of girls from the apartment took one last extended bike ride together out of the bustling city, past the sandy and fishy-smelling beaches near lyngby and, 45 minutes later, arrived at dyrehaven (the deer park), a forested park that covers nearly 11 square kilometers. 

the park is known for its mixture of huge, ancient oak trees and large populations (over 4000!) of red and fallow deer. we rode our way into the park along with an endless procession of old cars for some sort of old car show and found a nice little mound where we ditched our bikes, spread out our blankets, nibbled on some small snacks, and warmed our faces in the sun.

it seemed we couldn't lie there for long enough. but eventually, we made our way back to our bikes and slowly mozied our way to the eremitage palace, christian vi of denmark's palace, just down the road, used to host royal banquets during royal hunts in dyrehaven.

never intended for residence, the palace originally
featured a hoisting apparatus able to hoist the table
from the basement to the dining room, allowing the
king and his guests to dine without any waiters
present, or an "eremitage" (in solitude) 

we then entered one of the most famous parts of the park known as dyrehavsbakken (the deer park hill), commonly referred to as bakken (the hill), which opened in 1583 and is the world's oldest operating amusement park. it's a pretty cute, with a handful of rides, shops, outdoor arenas and restaurants that are apparently known for serving some of the best traditional danish-style food. it was getting pretty late, so after taking a quick walk around the entire park we unanimously agreed on all going on one ride: the rutschebanen (the roller coaster). this wooden roller coaster was opened in 1932, thus claiming to be one of the oldest wooden roller coaster's still in operation.

i'm still not quite sure if agreeing to go on the world's oldest wooden roller coaster is necessarily impressive, or downright mad, but regardless everyone who went handled the ride quite nicely. i'm not quite a fan of amusement rides myself, but i must admit this was a good one. we were rewarded with a giant double scoop ice cream cone topped with a large flødeboller, a chocolate covered marshmallow confection, as we made our way out of the park and back to our bikes.

from a twisting ride through the air, to the straight ride on the sturdy streets back home, we all agreed that the day was the perfect addition to the giant ride that has been our semester abroad, one we hoped wouldn't necessarily end once the semester was over.