Spring bicycle trip - Nyboder

Today I took a shorter trip into the old Copenhagen. The orange buildings are Nyboder, an old residential neighbourhood near Østerport station built by King Christian IV. They were made for employees of the large Danish fleet, and the small town had special status with its own schools, hospitals and police. The houses was reserved sailors with a service period of 16-20 years, and it was included in the agreement that the sons of the families had to be sent to Holmen, the headquarters of the navy, to become sailors.

The construction was initiated in 1631. The houses were placed in a new district east of Copenhagen, today bordering the part of the harbour called Langelinie and the late nineteenth century neighbourhood, Østerbro.

People still live here, but it is no longer hardened sailors and their families.

The yellow/orange colour is made from minium and changes according to the weather. The more moist the more red it becomes.

A beautiful and warm day. I was in sportsjacket and tie, my heavy woolen coat was left at home.

A statue of Christian IV from the nineteenth century.

And a contemporary painting of the fierce and fat king himself.

The renaissance king, Christian IV, is without doubt the most popular King in Denmark. He was a drunkard, a spendthrift and a womaniser - all traits that are valued by the Danes. But he was also a builder, an unsuccessful, but brave warrior and a loving father for the 23 children he had with 5 different women (The old Viking tradition to acknowledge the children of your mistresses, called friller, was still at work in the seventeenth century.)

The romantic painter Wilhelm Marstrands depiction of the famous moment in the sea battle of Kolberger Heide in 1644, where the king hit by shrapnel and presumed dead rises and say: "I still live, we will continue fighting!"

Copenhagen would be without many of its most beautiful buildings had it not been for Christian IV. I went past his own favourite, the little castle called Rosenborg (Rose Castle). The garden is still there and on warm days like this one the people of Copenhagen throw themselves at the lawns to get some much needed sun. The park is called The Kings Garden.

Rosenborg castle is a small castle in the eastern part of the old city. It was not used much by the later kings, but it houses the Crown jewels.

As soon as the sun showns up in Denmark (that is right about now), people swarm to the Kings Garden to relax and fill up their body's vitamin D depository.

In the eighties and nineties it was a good place to go if you liked topless girls, but the puritanism of the new millennia has made that a much rarer thing. In the left side of the image some people are playing the old viking game kaste kævler with plastic bottles instead of timber logs.

I visited my wife's shop and rode home in the early commuting hours. I wanted to take an image of some of the commuters, but instead I got an image of the beautiful, redhaired girl biking in front of me.

(You can see people on bikes in the background if you look closely)

Almost home I took a picture of the old cherry tree. My wife asked me yesterday, when she returned home from a four day working trip, if it blossomed, and I didn't know (she keeps a vigil eye out for things like that) - but now I checked... and it is.

The trip was 14 km.