A day in Copenhagen…

Today was a beautiful day in Copenhagen, much better weather than we have had so far. The temps were in the 40’s and the sun was shinning, so no complaints here. We started with breakfast, European breakfasts rule because you can have a ham sandwich, and the coffee is fantastic. We asked the concierge where the tourists go, and it turns out he was from Niagara Falls, it truly is a small world. He gave us a map and told us some points of interest that we had to see.

We started walking, and we walked a lot today, my dogs were barking by the time we made it back to the hotel. We headed down past the Tivoli, towards the canals. The canals had fishing boats docked along and the water was crystal clear. Row houses flanked either side and it looked just like the puzzle we had put together over the Holiday break. We then headed to Christian VII’s Palace and watched the changing of the guard. The guards looked like the ones in London, but they didn’t act like them. They looked around and smiled at the tourists taking photos. Other than the bearskin hats, they had nothing else in common.

Next we headed to the Citadel, which still looked somewhat active. We saw the statue of the Little Mermaid, and on the way saw where Hans Christian Anderson lived. There was a beautiful park there full of canals, and we were able to hike around for a while. We headed up towards the old windmill, but didn’t see any tulips coming up yet.

We took a break and had some lunch, a club sandwich and a couple of Carlsbergs. After lunch we did a little shopping. The kids were taking care of in Sweden when we ran into that big toy store, but wives need some Danish wares as well. We made out pretty well, considering that there are about ten million stores in the city.

Next it was off to the Rundetaarn, a large tower that you can climb to the top. It was a large spiral incline with stairs at the very top. The last set of stairs was a spiral with hardly enough room for one person to go up or down. It was funny because you had to take turns with a group of people headed up and a group of people headed down. It seems like it would be a big bottleneck, but it worked pretty well. At the top you could see just how big Copenhagen is. We snapped a couple of photos with our single shoot cameras we bought in Sweden.

After, we headed up to the Rosenborg Castle, where they keep the crown jewels. This one was guarded by real solders that looked a lot more intimidating than the ones at the palace.  We were able to see tons of antiques, with the flint lock guns, swords of every description, and finally the crowns. Lots of gold and diamonds, but a little gaudy for my tastes, I prefer a crown that is a little less overstated. We were able to tour only three rooms of the castle because the rest was being renovated. They also had an exhibit of the royal wedding outfits from the 16^th century. It was hard to believe that they were that tiny back then, the outfits almost looked like doll clothes. We toured the gardens and headed back to the hotel.

On the way we caught the tail end of a demonstration. There were more police than I would have thought they had in all of Europe. We had heard that they were having riots, and this must have been the more peaceful portion of them. We still aren’t sure what the fuss was exactly about. We were tempted to start chanting and marching, but we weren’t sure if the company would bail us out if we were protesting, especially if we didn’t know what we were protesting.

Finally a break at the hotel, rub down the feet and rest the back. We have to get geared up for dinner.

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