Copenhagen

Copenhagen is absolutely beautiful. It is one of my favorite cities that I have been to on this trip. After having a gloomy few days, the sun was out today which was perfect for seeing the city. It was still really cold but at least it was sunny.
I had a bus and canal tour today. The bus tour was pretty much as I expected. It is not my favorite way to see a city because you tend to drive past a lot of things and you don't get the opportunity to appreciate them as much but you also get to see things more quickly and you get to see more stuff.
We stopped at the statue of the Little Mermaid. Copenhagen is the hometown of Hans Christian Andersen and his influence is seen throughout the city. He has a large street named after him and the statue of the Little Mermaid is probably the most famous landmark in Copenhagen. She has had a rough history though, having been decapitated twice and other different abuses to her.

We drove past the Kastellet, which is the best preserved examples of star fortress style in Northern Europe, and saw the Norway gate. Unfortunately, because we were in the bus I wasn't able to get any photos of it but it was nice to see regardless. The Nazis had to actually take this fortress when they invaded Denmark during World War II. Here are some pictures that are near the castle and give an idea of what the moat and walls would look like.

Like a few other Northern Europe countries, Denmark is a constitutional monarchy. Similar to Great Britain, they have palace guards and every have a changing of the guard in the main square every day at noon. We were there in time to watch the changing of the guard.

The main square is impressive as well. Amailenborg has four palaces all facing the center of the square which has a statue of King Friederick V. Because it's Europe, the Queen's palace was being renovated so there was scaffolding (Return of the Scaffolding? The Scaffolding Strikes Back? A New Scaffold? There are too many different Star Wars things for this...) but the rest of the square was beautiful. At the far end of the square you can also see the Marble Church which is a replica of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

The Copenhagen Opera house is just across the canal and forms a line with the square and the church. This was intentional, and the opera house is an amazing modern structure that does not look out of place with the classic beauty of the square and church.

We saw more things on the bus tour but some I couldn't get pictures of and some overlapped with the canal tour so I'm going to skip ahead to that. The canal tour was really cool even if it was cold. I sat outside so that I would be able to get pictures of the tour without the glass in the way. We saw the building that was supposed to be a stock exchange but never fulfilled its calling and probably became Denmark's first shopping mall. It is a cool building because of the spire on top which has four dragons spiraling to the top.

We went past the old gun boat sheds in an area of the city that now has extremely expensive housing. It used to be all owned by the navy to prevent the possibility of fire from the wooden ships burning the city to the ground. A fun story is that there is a naval ship that is retired in the harbor that only fired one missile in its entire history and that was by accident. It ended up destroying several vacation homes and caused a ton of property damage but no one was hurt.

The Church of Our Savior in Copenhagen is hard to miss. It has a huge spire going up and dominates the skyline. You can walk to the top of it and get views over Copenhagen. It was closed by the time I was able to walk to it but I have pictures of the church from land and the canal cruise. The spire actually goes counterclockwise up which is unusual because it seems like it is spiraling down instead of up towards heaven.

I also walked over to Christiana, which I saw from the bus, after the cruise. Christiana is a commune in the middle of Copenhagen that is self governing. You can buy shares in Christiana to support the free community. It is also home to Copenhagen's Green Light District. Here they sell soft core drugs. It is illegal to sell them in Denmark but in Christiana that doesn't matter. You aren't allowed to take photos in the city but I took some of the entrances and the outside.

After this I walked back to my hotel to prepare for the night at Tivoli Gardens. It was a really cool night, if not expensive. Tivoli Gardens is beautiful and it is easy to see how Walt Disney got the inspiration for Disneyland from it. I bought the multi-ride ticket and easily got my value from it. Without it, you have to pay for the rides separately so I'm glad I splurged on it and got to go on as many rides as I wanted. It was a good night and I spent hours here. Because it is October the entire park is decorated for Halloween.

Tomorrow, I will head over to Great Britain and have a couple nights in London. It will be nice getting back to English speaking countries because that is all that I have left. Tomorrow... London!