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Published: December 26th 2009
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Our overnight bus from Stockholm crossed a very long bridge from Sweden to Denmark at about 07.00 and then stopped at the central station from where we caught a bus to our hostel. Unable to check in until later, we took our laundry to the very retro laundromat cafe where we had an excellent Danish breakfast at the same time as gaining clean clothes! Two things a traveller loves - a hearty meal and clean clothes!
Once again we did lots of exploring on foot - I wish I'd had a pedometer on this trip to see how far I've walked! As Copenhagen was about to host the Climate change summit, there were lots of great photos displayed on a central plaza, depicting places in the world most affected by climate changes. We enjoyed looking at them for a while as the photos were fantastic, and some of the places we'd visited were shown. Also to do with the climate change summit, the Christmas tree lights in the centre were powered by bikes, so Nikki and I helped light up the Christmas tree with our leg muscles!
As we approached the winter royal palace there was a beautiful sunset
- just a bit too early, as it gets dark far too early for my liking in the winter! The Nyhvet area with coloured buildings by the water was very pretty. After much walking through Kings Park and along Christmas light-lined streets we stopped for Copenhagen's local favourite, the hot dog. As seems to be the done thing here, I complied and had a hot dog from a street vendor with the works, and actually it was good! (I'm not usually a fan).
The national museum in Copenhagen is free, and worth a visit if you are interested. Of course we could not miss out the "top tourist attraction", the Little mermaid. It is actually just a statue in the water, but you have to go and see it, just because it is there! It was given to the city as a gift because Hans Christian Anderson, author of the little mermaid, was Danish.
Christiana was a strange place to visit - basically loads of people smoking weed and selling blocks of it out in the open. It is a special zone that is not part of the EU, and has it's own rules! Very bizarre, but I think
maybe the atmosphere is better in the summer when everyone's outside and in a better mood because it's not freezing cold!
On our last evening we went to Tivoli which was very Christmassy with hundreds of fairly lights around. It was fairly expensive as we had to pay to walk around the grounds, and if we wanted anything on top of that, we had to pay again. We had a nice evening though! Copenhagen in general is a very expensive city, at the moment anyway.
I have noticed that the further away from Russia I get, across Europe, the more relaxed and daring the populations become. In Finland, no one jaywalked, in Sweden, some people did. In Finland there was no graffitti, in Copenhagen there is graffitti, outfits and uniformity change as well....it's interesting to see!
Copenhagen is a very pretty city by the water, and different from both Helsinki and Stockholm. There are lots of bicycles around too, that's definitely the way to get around if you live there.
Next stop, Berlin!
J xx
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