The gang got going around 11:00 this morning, determined to see the city. We hopped off the metro at Norreport and found a cute Danish pastry place for a late breakfast. YUM! I had a cinnamon twisted bread with almond and icing. We ate in beautiful botanic gardens. For the rest of the post, I am going to highlight some of the main sites. After breakfast, we walked to the..
- Rosenborg Castle. This was built by Christian IV as a summer house but later became the main residence. It was really picturesque and stood alone, surrounded by the King's Gardens.
We then made our way to the...
- Round Tower (Rundetarn): Here, we ascended the spiral ramp to the top for a good view of the city. This is Europe's oldest astronomical observatory, built by Christian IV and opened in 1642.
I was the navigator for the trip, so we were following a walking tour that was shown on my map. We followed different streets and made our way to the...
- Copenhagen Citadel, a military fortress. Nearby is the Gefion Statue which has a cool story. According to Norse mythology, the Kind of Sweden offered the goddess Gefion as much land as she could plough in one night, so she changed her four sons into oxen and used them to plough all of Zealand, thus removing the island from Swedish rule.
The next destination was the famous...
- Little Mermaid statue. There were tons of tourists, and after hearing that it was pretty underwhelming, I thought it was pretty cool--much bigger and closer than I expected it to be. I learned later that the Little Mermaid had her head removed in the 1960s and an arm sawn off in the 1980s, requiring a recasting and grafting. Yikes! It was super touristy and tough to get a picture, but it was a must-see.
Next stops included the...
- Marble Church: (Marmorkirken), which was begun in 1749 but halted for a century when expenditures were too expensive because of all the marble, and it was finished later wiht Danish limestone.It is modeled after St. Peter's in the Vatican.
- Amalienborg Slot: (where we saw the changing of the guard!), the home of the Danish royal family since 1794 when a fire destroyed Christiansborg (another palace we saw)
- the Opera House and Playhouse,
- and the walking tour ended at Nyhavn, the gorgeous harbor of the city. The buildings were all painted different colors and it was so very picturesque. The area had been the red-light district in the 1800s, but Hans Christian Andersen lived there for 20 years after it had transformed itself into the heart of Copenhagen's social scene.
We followed the walkway to...
- Stroget: a 1 mile road with tons and tons of stores for both high and low end shopping.
I found a cute sandwich place to get a quiche for lunch and then we headed to the...
- National Museum: Inside the museum, (a former royal palace built in the 1740s) were lots of old relics of early stone age history. The museum concentrates on Danish history. There were also a lot of skeletons of bodies that had been preserved in bogs. Kinda creepy but cool stuff. It was interesting to read some of the stories. The crew took a 20 minute break after the museum because our feet were hurting from walking the city!
After this, we did some souvenir shopping and then around 6:00, we headed back to our place since we were exhausted. At 7:30, we took off in the car to find some dinner, but we must have chosen the worst part of town to find a restaurant because there was NOTHING for us to find. Either the places had nowhere to sit, they were closed or they were take away only. We drove farther down the road and thankfully stumbled upon a cute and cozy cafe around 9:15. The food was delicious, especially because we were hungry, and it turned out to be a great ending to the day. Tomorrow we hope to hit up a pastry place before leaving and then we make the long drive back to Sweden so Diane and I can go to practice at 4:00. I've loved my time in Copenhagen!
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