What Are They Doing?

Today we got up for our free buffet breakfast and immediately made pigs of ourselves. The highlight of the breakfast was the Danish pastries. I guess they had to be good seeing as we were in Denmark. The weather today was beautiful. Sunny with only a few clouds. We decided to head straight for the Little Mermaid statue and then to Amelienborg palace to see the changing of the guards ceremony. Carmen had the map today and instructed us which direction to walk in. We had walked for about 15 minutes when Carmen said that she wasn’t sure we were going the right way. We checked the map again and she was right - we were heading in the opposite direction. We had to be at the palace before 12pm to get a good position to watch the ceremony, so we had to powerwalk the whole way back and then head in the right direction. We made it with 10 minutes to spare. The ceremony was pretty interesting. The guards looked surprisingly young, but their guns looked to be the real deal. The palace was pretty amazing to look at. We couldn’t see Mary or Frederik though. At one stage a fleet of black cars motored our of the secure gates with the biggest car carrying one woman which looked at a glance like Queen Margarete, but who knows. Once we had had enough of the palace we headed for the little mermaid. We had a few photos with the statue then made our way back into town.
On our way we came across the Danish Resistance Museum and decided to have a look inside. It turned out to be free entry on Wednesdays, which was cool. The museum had lots of war relics and the history of Danish involvement in world war 2.
As we walked to town we came across the Marble Church aka Frederik’s Church. We went inside and had a look around. The place was amazing with a huge dome with a fresco painting. It was supposed to be a silent church but we decided that while we were alone in the foyer we would use the building acoustics to do some Gregorian Chants.
We got back to the city centra and it was time for lunch so we decided to get some food from a roadside vendor. We had a Danish crepe with Danish ham, pesto and parmesan cheese. It was so good and warm in the cold weather. After lunch we headed over to the other palace in the city - Christiansborg Palace. It was kind of desolate as it was getting late in the afternoon. The palace was in the middle of being restored, so there was a lot of scaffolding around the exterior. We looked around the grounds for a while and then headed for the National Museum.
When we arrived we were again surprised to see that it was also free admission on Wednesday. We tried to get as much in as possible as the museum was due to close in just over 1 hour. We saw a lot of the history of Denmark, along with other Scandinavian countries. They had a toy museum that had a load of historical toys and super detailed doll houses.
After this we headed for the Tivoli amusement park which is near the centre of town. Unfortunately it was closed until Christmas, so we couldn’t go inside. Next we walked back down the Walking Street (Strget) and saw some more buskers. I had one of them try to get me into a game. He was doing the game with the three cups and a ball hidden under one of them. He couldn’t speak English and couldn’t understand me when I said that I had no money. I felt like a real fool because if I had money I would have won because I happened to see the cup covering the ball lift up when he moved it. Oh well, he probably would have ripped me off somehow anyway.
The Round Tower was open so we went up to see a great view of the city. They also have an observatory with a large telescope at the top. The telescope was fixed on Mars, and Carmen and I had a good look at it for a while. Then we headed home for sleep. We had had a huge day with far too much walking.

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Filed under: Travel, Denmark