Visiting Frederiksborg Castle in Hillerød, Hillerod, Denmark (B)

Today was a glorious day! The sun was shining, the air was fresh, and it was time for an adventure outside the city! Our teacher had arranged for our class to visit the ruins of Æbelholt Abbey, an old Augustinian monastery, which is located 5 km. west of Hillerød in Northern Zealand. Because of its remote location, a few of us chose to take our bikes on the train to Hillerød and then bike to the monastery from there. Visiting Æbelholt Abbey was an interesting experience, which I’ll be writing a lot more about in a later post on all of the amazing excursions on Zealand that we’ve been having on this course.

Before leaving in the morning, I looked at a map of Hillerød to see if there was anything else interesting nearby that I just had to see. And sure enough, there was! Being from Jutland, I know almost nothing about the amazing sights that Zealand and the other parts of Denmark have to offer. This is something that I want to change, which is also one of my main reasons for moving to Copenhagen. I want to explore my home country some more; and I want to see every corner of it. Despite what a lot of Danes think, Denmark IS an amazing country with heaps to see and do. I can completely understand why tourists come here, and I’m proud to call it my home. Denmark may not be at all mountainous, but we do have lakes, forests, beautiful coastlines and so much more. And then there’s our cultural heritage. There is so much history in Denmark (and Scandinavia in general) and it can be seen everywhere in the landscape. Wherever you go, you’ll see something that was built hundreds of years ago. Usually, that will be a white stone church in Romanesque style from the Middle Ages, but sometimes it’s something even more extraordinary. Sometimes maybe even a castle will appear, and that’s exactly what happened to me today. While looking at the map, I saw that in the middle of Hillerød lies Frederiksborg Castle and its castle garden with an area of 95 hectare, and I quickly figured out that this was not a sight that I wanted to miss. Since I was already in the area, I decided to pay it a visit. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).