Day 46. Architecture, Part 4: Free rein.

I went with my coworkers to Ørestad, a neighborhood in Vestamager that has seen a recent boom in ambitious and wildly designed buildings. Up-and-coming designers like Bjarke Ingels (<<website is awesome) have been given relatively free rein to dream up and construct living spaces and office buildings that Europe often shies away from, a result of strict zoning that prevents bold new architecture from mingling with quaint old architecture.

With tons of open land and license to experiment, architects have bent glass and steel into crazy apartment blocks like 8TALLET and the Tietgen Students' Residence. Honestly, the trip to Ørestad felt a bit like a trip into Orbit City - all that was missing was a Spacely Sprockets factory.

Inside 8TALLET

Ørestad Plejecenter: the coolest nursing home on the planet?

Day 43. Architecture, Part 1: Row houses.

Modern apartment blocks dominate much of "new" Copenhagen, especially the district of Vestamager and along the main harbor. Glass and steel are the materials of choice for Denmark's current batch of architects, and the buildings they design are incredibly imaginative. I'll write about these soon.

Conversely, most of "old" Copenhagen (especially Indre By, where I live), is a charming mishmash of row houses that crowd the streets and sidewalks below. They're filled with character, slanting and spilling toward each other, and yet they're very often expensive to purchase or rent. Never do two adjacent match in color and rarely do they match in size or detail.

This is the Copenhagen tourists love.

Day 34. Roskilde.

Roskilde is best known for its UNESCO-listed cathedral, its Viking Ship Museum, and its raucous music festival (don't Google Image Search it unless you want to see lots of naked folks). I saw the cathedral and the museum; sweaty-hippy music fests are my own personal hell, so I made sure to head to Roskilde a week later. It's only a 30-minute train ride west of Copenhagen, so I spent the afternoon strolling around.

The cathedral and museum were both impressive and well worth the visit. I'm sure the music festival is awe-inspiring in its own right. But as is the case with so many places that have become famous for a few sights, Roskilde is most charming when one steps ever so slightly off of the beaten path.