The most exciting weekend!

All last week, I could hardly contain my excitement for what the weekend would bring!  For one thing, one of my best friends from Stonehill would be visiting.  Also, Kulturnatten, or "Culture Night" was scheduled for Friday, and some of our friends from Århus would be passing through Copenhagen too!  So many fun activities!!  I was seriously like a little kid waiting for Christmas!

Finally, Friday afternoon rolled around, bringing Danielle to Copenhagen!  Danielle is doing an internship in London this semester, and she gets major friend points for waking up at 2:30am to get an early flight to Denmark.  Back at Stonehill, Amy and Danielle are roommates, so all three of us were so so so excited to be reunited for the weekend!

This is Danielle.  (The one who isn't me or Amy.)  Danielle enjoys dancing, Sigmund Freud, chocolate bundt cake, and spending time with her dog, Lucky.  Danielle does not enjoy disorganization of any sort, when the breakfast omelets at Stonehill are soggy, or traveling alone.

After our morning class, Amy went to pick Danielle up from the train station, and they were both waiting for me when I got out of class at 1.  We spent the afternoon catching up, taking a walk to Agnes Cupcake, and introducing Danielle to Netto, our lovely local grocery store.  The three of us cooked dinner, and then got ready for Kulturnatten festivities!

"Kulturnatten" is basically a big fall festival across the whole city of Copenhagen.  For any south eastern Pennsylvania locals (or maybe just my parents) it was kind of like Grand Illuminations at Peddler's Village on a MUCH larger scale.  Everything stays open until around midnight, and you can walk around and see lots of galleries, gardens, take flashlight tours of the castle, and grab some hot chocolate at the Royal Library.  Even DIS got involved, putting together an authentic "American" Halloween celebration, which was conveniently set up right in my courtyard!  They had s'mores, pumpkin carving, and a haunted house.  Anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely LOVE autumn activities like this, so I was in heaven.

My roommates Russell, Jamie, and Anna

Over the course of the night, we also went to the Roundtower.  We climbed to the top and got to see the city at night, and as an added Kulturnatten bonus, we got to climb a little bit higher to the observatory!!  We got to look through a super intense telescope and check out Jupiter.

Some casual star-gazing

After the Roundtower, we met up with a few more DIS friends and decided to take a walk down toward the King's Garden.   We ended up wandering into the Film Institute, the Odd Fellow's Mansion, and all the way down to Nyhavn where we purchased ice cream (despite the chilly weather).  From there, we continued down to the Royal Library.  I realize that I probably sound like the world's nerdiest person for having SO much fun running around the library on a Friday night at midnight... but it really was so cool!  I noticed some tiny, off the beaten path rooms full of books (Beauty and the Beast status) and maybe even some future study areas.  Outside the library, we watched some small children twirling fire and playing the bagpipes.

First time (pretending to) drive a car in 2 months!

Stumbled upon the Odd Fellow's Palace

Our footwear inside the palace

We make a cute couple

Being in the library after midnight isn't usually this much fun..

Okay kids..

The energy level in the city was crazy, and I was loving every second of it!  Like I mentioned earlier, we even got to meet up with our friends from Århus who we met way back in September and who were passing through Copenhagen this weekend- yay fellow international students!!

On Saturday, Amy, Danielle and I headed out to do some typical Copenhagen sight seeing!  The weather was perfect, and we took the water taxi down to the Little Mermaid (third visit, by the way) and then walked around that area before checking out Nyhavn.  A little later, we picked up some hotdogs and went to sit in the King's Garden, where we proceeded to find a perfect tree for climbing.  We hung out there for a while, then cooked omelets for dinner.  Strange, you might say; however, all three of us have been sorely missing the omelets from Stonehill's cafeteria that we love so much.  Our goal was to recreate these omelets, and we succeeded!!  (If I do say so myself...)

Third time's a charm

Stonehill takes Copenhagen :)

Yum.

Today we started the day with banana/nutella crepes, then we walked over to Christianshavn.  At three we stopped by an art gallery where my SRA Anna had some paintings.  Then, we took Danielle for a last meal at RizRaz before sending her back off to London!  :(  Definitely wanted to keep her here, but it was so great for Amy and I to be reunited with one of our best friends from school, even if it was only a weekend!  Over our two week travel break, we're going to get to go check out London!

So much fun with so many friends!  :)