Blogs from Denmark, Europe - page 9

Last night I was up most of the night with vomiting from food poisoning. It had to happen eventually, I suppose, and I won’t spend any more time on it except to say that I didn’t have much energy today and didn’t get to see very much. I looked at the list of things still to see in Copenhagen and decided the one I most wanted was the Danish Viking Ship Museum. This is located in Roskilde, a thirty-minute train ride from Copenhagen. I managed to make my way there on the train and the bus, but I was moving slowly.! This museum contains the remains of five Viking ships that were discovered at the bottom of a shallow bay near there. The ships were painstakingly excavated and put back to together over a period of ... read more

I slept pretty well last night on the rocking ship and this morning I was up in time to snap a picture of Elisnor as we passed by. Shakespeare fans will recall that this is the fictional home of Hamlet the melancholy Dane. I had a fine breakfast - including a Danish - and disembarked in Copenhagen a couple of hours later. In town I took a canal cruise that went past the statue of The Little Mermaid out in the harbor. There were lots of tourists on land taking pictures of her, as well. Afterward I did a tour of Christianborg Palace, one of the residences of the Danish royal family. I was not very impressed, I must say, but one thing that I did like was the tapestries hanging in one of the big ... read more

Arrived into Copenhagen mid afternoon to a hot 29deg day. A 25 hr trip but pretty good & not too tired & then a short train ride to our starting point accommodation, the Hotel Cabinn City, a little bit basic & no AC. Apart from a supermarket trip, no time for a city walk before an evening briefing and a meet-up with the rest of the group. The tour has a full group of 12 supported by a leader/guide. The group dynamic is very diverse in age, gender and geographic home & a group dinner was a nice way to get to know everyone. Some will only do stages of the tour and we will pickup new people along the way. Another hot day expected and we started with a morning bike tour around the wide ... read more

THE CRUISE Arrival in Copenhagen The plane landed in Copenhagen. We took the metro from the airport to the city center. On the way up to street level, Aylin lost her footing and tumbled backward down the escalator. She was spinning around, trying to grab something so she could stand up. Luggage continued to bounce from step to step. I had two bags of my own. I left them to go down the stairs and reach Aylin. It was terrifying. Somehow she got to her feet. She was a trooper and insisted she was all right. On the street, after turning in circles for a bit, wondering which way to go, a young man, pushing his son in a stroller, took Aylin’s bag and escorted us to our hotel. We had a comfortable double room at ... read more

Copenhagen is immediately impressive in a grand majestic way. A bit like Vienna in that this place is clearly rich and royal but was perhaps once richer and royaler and more important. There are no tall modern skyscrapers on the skyline, rather there are abundant palace turrets, castle towers, church spires and the ancient roller-coasters of Tivoli Gardens (the amusement park opened in 1843! Which makes it only the second oldest in the world. The oldest is also in Denmark). The lack of tall buildings, combined with the squares, parks, gardens and especially the canals and wide harbours give Copenhagen a sense of being open and spacious. Despite being a capital city, you never feel like you are on top of people. The extra wide pavements probably help as well – extra wide to accommodate cycle ... read more