Itinerary followed during this Interrail throughout Germany, Denmark and Switzerland

Cologne - Koblenz - Copenhagen - Helsingor - Hillerod - Roskilde - Berlin - Potsdam - Rhine cruise - Freiburg - Strasbourg - Black Forest - Rhine waterfalls - Schaffhausen - Stein am Rhein - Konstanz - Zurich - Basel - Interlaken - Luzern - Zermatt - Brig - Bern - Geneva - Heidelberg - Munich - Dachau - Fussen - Nuremberg - Rothenburg (ODT) - Wurzburg - Jungfrau and Lauterbrunnen - Brienz - Geneva

While our stay in Copenhagen we decided to visit three interesting villages located in the peninsula in one day: Helsingor, Hillerod and Roskilde. Perhaps we went with tight timetable if we realize that at 18-19 o'clock everything is closed. This fact affected our visit to Roskilde, where there was no activity.
Helsingor is a lovely seaside village, one hour far from Copenhagen. The main attractive is the Kronborg Castle , a mixture of military fortress and royal castle.

Around 1420 a castle was erected in a desert place at the north of the peninsula with the purpose of guaranteeing that the ships and boats that passed through this point paid a toll. For more than 400 years this toll was collected (the so-called Sound Dues) until 1857, when Denmark was obliged to renounce to this custom.
In 1574 Frederick II decided to construct a magnificent castle in Dutch Renaissance style and changed the name to Kronborg. In 1585 it was finalized thanks to the contribution of the Sound Dues.

The finality o the castle was to supply Denmark with prestige. Shakespeare helped this aim around 1600, when he wrote Hamlet, a story that happens inside this castle, and that was set in the castle rooms and halls. A fire damaged seriously the castle in 1629 and Christian IV restored it the same year, again thanks to the Sound Dues. The Swedish troops occupation from 1658 to 1660 caused the robbery and destruction of many things. Afterwards the kings visited this place less and less, so finally in 1785 the castle converted into a barracks.

We moved through the kings chambers and also the dungeons and underground passages. You will meet the statue of Holger the Danish, the guard of Denmark, who, as the legend affirms, will stand up whenever Denmark is threatened.
Have a walk in the village, which keeps some houses dating from 1600 in the old part. It is a tourist place, near the sea and very close to Helsinborg, in Sweden. Helsingor has some museums and they celebrate several festivals, especially about Hamlet.