Day 9 - Copenhagen, Denmark
The ferry docked at 10.00am. and this time we waited to avoid the rush we experienced with the last ferry trip. Our large suitcases had been transported separately so we only had carry on overnight luggage with us…so much easier. Our local guide Anna, was waiting along with the coach and we immediately set off on a tour of Copenhagen the city.
The first stop was the “Little Mermaid”, a famous sculpture in the harbour. From this vantage point we could also see the royal yacht which was in town to pick up the king and queen (Mary from Tassie) to take them to one of the Danish island communities.
From there we saw the 4 oxen and their mother - there is a tale to go along with this, something along the lines that the mother was promised as much land as she could sow with seed in one-day … little did they know she was a sorceress and she turned her sons into oxen to help and she was able to lay claim to a huge tract of land. We are not sure if the sons got to be human again !
Onto the Royal Palace, which is not the Parliament house and supreme courts, there are gardens and a library behind this building. We then drove though Christiana, a deserted military complex that hippies laid claim to and declared it as an independent state !
The last stop was the Opera house with its impressive floating roof.
We could now drop our bags at our hotel (still too early to check in), and it was time to farewell our land based tour guide Jan, who had been looking after us for the first week of the tour. He was ok, but we thought he was a bit lacking in communicating information and choices of activities for our free time. Even at the beginning of the tour he did not really get the group of 34 to know each other, leaving it up to us to make our introductions as we got a chance. The result was there were some members we were yet to know their names still at the end of the week.
After checking in it was time for a ‘Tania’s Tour’ of the city centre, visiting the main shopping street, City Park, NyHavn where the canal and famous coloured houses are, Tivoli Gardens and back past the train station. This was in time to check in, into room #143, being the furthest one from the lift or stairs ! We then set out to find some dinner.
The Slaughterhouse district was recommended to us, but it was mostly bars and very crowded…maybe too hip for us. There also seemed to be a few drug users there but in the end we went into the LIDL store next to the hotel, where we bought a prepared chicken salad and pasta salad, 2 beers, and a chocolate mousse for Tania. Dinner cost us 14euro, the same price a kebab was going to cost. Our first impressions of Copenhagen is that of a very comfortable city to walk, lots of history and plenty of attractions to visit. The people also seem very friendly. Copenhagen is very interesting sitting over 14 islands and connected by bridges.
