København, Danmark
We had a 6:20AM train to catch, so we woke up very early and checked out
of the hotel. We found the right train, and we were bound for
København, Danmark (Copenhagen, Denmark if you speak English, but
that's less fun to write).
The train ride was about 4 hours, and the first half was in
the dark. Southern Sweden along the coast is flat and green - it looked
a lot like
Iowa. Here's my attempt at taking a picture:
Here is a rough map of our journey (in red), with my GPS semi-successfully getting
signal out of the window for part of the way. København is on an island, and until
recently you had to take a ferry to get there. Now there's a bridge-tunnel
that lets you make the whole trip by train.
We obtained some Danish Krona to spend. These are unrelated to
the Krona used in Sweden, and we spent a decent amount of time
trying to spend exactly the right amount of both kinds of currency
so we wouldn't have any left at the end of our trip.
The first thing you see after leaving the train station is
Tivoli which is a famous amusement park,
one of the oldest in the world:
Nearby is City Hall, and the World Clock:
Next to City Hall is the horn blowers statue, which is of vikings blowing
on bronze-age horns:
Kristina really liked the top of this church, the
Nikolaj Kirka. If you look closely, you can see a neat
pattern in the granite stones of this square.
Here is a statue of Bishop Absalon who founded Købenahvn:
Here is the old stock exchange building, which has a neat twisty tower on
top of it:
Here is a harbor area, with the stereotypical København view:
Here is the Marble Church, which we went inside:
We lucked out and were at the Queen's palace right around noon. She
was in residence, so we got to see the changing of the guard.
This was fun, because we had a good view of the whole event; when
in London we were at a guard-changing but didn't see a thing due
to massive crowds:
We walked north, along the waterfront. Here's "The English Church",
St. Albans, the only Anglican
church in Denmark:
Nearby is the famous little mermaid statue, which has somehow become
København's trademark. She's the tragic Hans Christian Anderson
mermaid, not the happy Disney one.
The area we were at now was an old fort, still in use:
We walked along the ramparts, which was terribly cold due to a brisk wind.
Nearby was the Museum
of the Danish Resistance which was all about how the locals resisted
the Nazi occupiers during WWII. I was very impressed. Here's a
vehicle out front used by the resistance:
We then walked back to the center of the city. There's a square
which they turn into an ice-rink in the winter:
Here is Parliament, which we ended up walking through multiple times.
As you can see, it is under renovation:
Here is the National Library. Kristina likes visiting each country's
National Library.
By this point it is starting to get late, so we arrange to meet a college
friend of mine who lives here.
More København