Copenhagen

Because of how tight our schedule was, G and I only had one day to tour Copenhagen. Although I feel like we could have used more time, perhaps a half day more, we had a great experience in this capitol city.

Our hotel was about a block from the central train station, so we were easily able to walk to all the sights. We started the day by walking to the Christianborg Palace.  We've seen so many castles and palaces on this trip; honestly, I am a little castled out. The part of the palace I liked best was actually the horse and buggies we watched out in the courtyard. I'm not sure if they were training the horses or exercising them, but it was interesting.

We walked through Christiana, an interesting, autonomous neighborhood in Copenhagen. 

The best thing we did all day was go on a sightseeing boat tour. We got a good overview of the city inside a warm boat. The woman leading the tour gave the information in several languages.  She pointed out the palace, the opera house, and a dozen other sights.  We saw much of the city on this tour.

After the boat ride, we walked to the National Museum to see the viking exhibit. The museum was quite exceptional, and the best part was that it was free.  Unfortunately, we didn't have too much time; the museum closed at 5 PM.We were able to take our time in the viking exhibit and wander through a couple of the people of the world rooms before the museum closed. We still had a couple of sights left to see, so we left the museum and continued toward Nyhavn.

Although we had gotten a glimpse of Nyhavn on the boat tour, we walked through again on our way to kastellet. G and I have a puzzle of this neighborhood; I've wanted to visit this area since the last piece of the puzzle went in. Nyhavn is a canal district dating back to the 17th century. The buildings lining the canal are brightly painted, and historical ships can be seen docked along the harbor.

Nyhavn

From Nyhavn, we walked to kastellet. Kastellet was a fortress built in the shape of a star. We entered kastellet and walked along the ring of ramparts and bastions. Although various military activities still take place on the grounds, kastellet is primarily a park today.

Aerial view of kastellet

Our final stop was to see the little mermaid statue. We walked through kastellet to the other side, exited, and walked to the statue. There happened to be a group of guys there that thought it was hilarious to crawl up into the mermaid's lap to pose for pictures. This was only funny for about five seconds until I became annoyed that these guys were ruining my little mermaid pictures. I absolutely was not interested in a picture of the little mermaid with a random guy hanging off of her. A guy had his picture taken then hopped down. I seized my opportunity and was able to take a couple of photographs of the mermaid without the guys.

Exhausted, we walked to the nearest S-bahn station and took the train back to the central station. Tomorrow is a big day. We will both be flying out of the Copenhagen airport. G will be flying back home on a marathon trip. I will be flying to Reykjavik, Iceland to continue my journey. I still have another two and a half weeks of traveling before I fly home on October 22nd.