While in Copenhagen, I took a few rides farther afield. Riding about 25 miles North was a great way to spend an afternoon (and about the comfort limit on my creaky rented city cruiser, in jeans), and the Louisiana was one of the best modern art museums I’ve been to.
Denmark’s bike infrastructure extends far beyond the major cities– even through the countryside I was almost exclusively riding on separated bike paths.
Signs every few km pointed you to various bike routes and destinations. This “Bike Route 9” was the one I mostly followed. If I’d gone another 10 miles I would have made it to Helsingor (a.k.a. Hamlet’s castle), but the museum was too interesting to hurry through.
At times, the path ran behind people’s houses, at times along roads, at times through wide-open parks with only the occasional horse or cyclist or wild deer.
For one stretch, I took Bike Rt 152 which seemed slightly more direct and ran along the ocean… but it was also less pleasant, with headwinds and busy traffic on the adjacent road. It’s a sign of how spoiled I was by Denmark’s cycling infrastructure that I expected I could do better than “a dedicated, physically separated, paved path along a road”:
The Lousiana itself was excellent– an interesting set of collections combined with inspiring internal architecture– natural light illuminating much of the work (large windows and a much more open feeling than typical galleries), and a meandering floorplan revealing something new at every turn. A delightful merging of outdoor and indoor spaces.
A fine museum cafe and outdoor seating, with a sculpture garden on a bluff with panoramic views of the ocean:
And as the evening closed in, I hopped on the train back to Copenhagen.
