Day 9 - Discovering Copenhagen

We woke up late this morning @ 7:54 a.m., must be making up for yesterday’s early rise.  There’s breakfast at this hotel so we went down for breakfast here.  The had a very nice spread.  This was surprising because this hotel was only $102 per night, tax included.  Cheap!  Breakfast was lovely until two women sat down next to us and one of them didn’t understand the concept of indoors voice and was yammering the minute she sat down.  Too early for that much noise, we retreated back to our room. Time to get ready to start our touring anyway.

We have a lot to see today but we will have to see what we get done because rain is forecasted for the morning.  We are going to wear our rain jackets and not be deterred.

It turns out that it really only lightly rained.  We went out and walked everywhere.  So the first place was the Little Mermaid statue.  It was small, like everyone said but it was a very popular place.  We waited patiently to get our photos and then moved on.

Other photos around the area

Our next stop was the Kastellet, one of Europe’s best preserved fortresses.  Built by Christian IV in1631 for his Danish navy, it is now owned by the Denmark ministry of defense.  There are two guards at the entrance and one of their main repsonsibility is to manually raise the gate arm to let cars pass.  Can you imagine if that is your job?

Photos of a nearby Church and the crocus that are blooming

We then walked to the Ammeliaborg, the residence of the royal family.  There, we saw the change of guards.  When the queen is there, the flag is raised and the changing of the guards is accompanied by a band.  The docent told me that her majesty is recovering from back surgery and the prince regent is covering her duties.  She is 83 years old.  Her quarters are in the building with the flag.  The prince regents are in the left building and guests quarters are to the right of the building.

Next to the Ammeliaborg is the Frederick Church so naturally we went there.  They allow you to climb the dome but only on the weekend so no tour climbing for us.  

We then visited the Rosenborg Castle.  This is the place you go to see the Crown Jewels.  They had some at the Ammeliaborg too but this one had the crowns.  The big crown is said to be 4 lbs.  imagine having to balance a 4 lbs hat on your heart all night and having to dance too!  No thank you!  I love jewelry as much as the next girl but that seems to pass my threshold.  Luckily, I will never have to find out what it’s like.

The crown jewels

Our next stop is the Round Tower.  It’s a tower that you walk up and there are a last set of stairs that lead to the rooftop where you can get a birds-eye of Copenhagen.  Please enjoy these photos.

All that walking made us hungry so we headed to the next bakery that we wanted to check out.  Saint Peter Bageri also only bakes cinnamon rolls on Wednesdays so we went to checkout what it’s all about.  Supposedly they are also discounted but they don’t post a fee list so there’s no way to tell.  The verdict is that Brod bakery was much better.  The cinnamon roll here is similar to the ones in the U.S.  not that it was bad, it just wasn’t as good as Brod’s.

Fortified with baked goods, our next stop is the canal cruise.  I always like these cruises because you can see a bunch of things from the boat.  Here are some of the highlights.

We tried to see the Royal Reception room at the Christianborg castle but it was closed.  So we decided to take the metro to Brod bakery to get some more snels rolls but sadly, they were out.  So we made due with an almond croissant.  By now, it’s time for dinner.

We ate at the Warpigs tonight.  This place was a recommendation from someone in the U.S. He told me to go there to have great BBQ and he was right!  We got  sampler plate and it was delicious!  Rick and I both agreed that some of the sauces could be thicker but the food was really good.

Dinner over, we headed back to the hotel to enjoy our almond croissant with a cup of cafe latte for me and a cafe mocha for Rick.  Soooo good!

And that is the end of our second day in Copenhagen.  The forecast is for heavier rain tomorrow so we are going to see where we go tomorrow.  For now, I hope you enjoyed our photos from today.  Oh, and for anyone who is thinking about how I am eating all that pastries, I will have you know that I clocked 8.1 miles today so I think it’s ok.  Peace out.

Rick's notes for the day:

After a good night of sleep after a long day of travel and sight-seeing, we are ready to go for more.  But not until after a nice breakfast at the hotel.  After breakfast, we walked to the central station to catch the metro train to the station for the Little Mermaid.  The central station is not super intuitive for figuring stuff out but we got on a train and one transfer later, we are at the station nearest the Little Mermaid statue.  After a bit of walking, we got to the statue...along with a lot of other people.  But it was not the sheer number of people that was a problem, it was a group of about eight Americans that took every picture permutation for eight people.  My statistics knowledge is a bit rusty but I think that would be two to the eighth power (minus 1 for the permutation of no one in the picture) so about 255 pictures, me thinks.  Eventually they moved on and Rosie and I were able to get a few snaps in front of the famous statue.

After the Little Mermaid we saw a bunch of historical sites in Copenhagen using our Copenhagen Card. We did visit a couple more churches without any lightening, so we have that going for us.  Below are some of my favorite pictures from the day and why they are my favorites. 

The above photo will go into the Rosemary collection of photos with giant men.  The first being a statue in Quebec City, the second being a Ronald Reagan statute in Budapest and this is the third, King Frederick.

I wonder if this year's Christmas theme at our house will be gold??

This is the kind of stuff people did before the internet and video streaming.  Someone apparently spent all their time carving a sailing ship out of ivory...my goodness.

This is one of my favorite items of the day.  I have dubbed it, The Cheeseburge Chalice.  

One of my favorites things today was the 1.5 hour canal cruise.  This, too, was part of the Copenhagen Card pass which I highly recommend to anyone hoping to streamline a trip to Copenhagen.  We saw lots of cool sites on the tour and the tour guide provided a bunch of interesting information.  And I will note, some of those canals and bridges are an extremely tight fit.  The Danish people seem really into architecture and design and many of the builings are pretty cool looking.  There is one building called the Blox building that looks like it is made from giant Legos (created in Denmark).  On the canal tour, we also saw the headquarters of the shipping company, Maersk.  Their building is designed to look like stacked shipping containers and the windows are their trademark blue color.

Below is a short video from our canal cruise showing the tight fit under some of the bridges.

When we got back to the hotel this evening, mix-master Rosie concocted a couple of coffee drinks using the hotel's fancy coffee maker.  Mine was tasty and went very will with my almond croissant in our room.  Also below is Rosie chilling with the teddy bears in the lobby of the hotel.  I think it is going to be an early night for us.  21,000+ steps really takes it out of us.  We have one more full day in Copenhagen tomorrow so we will need to be rested to get the most out of it.