Walking in Copenhagen, Denmark

Copenhagen, Denmark is the beautiful capitol city of the Scandinavian country. It was the home of Hans Christian Andersen, is the current home of the Danish royalty and quite a place to visit. I had the opportunity to check out the city last week, and was quite happy with what I saw. The area around my hotel, the Marriott, was relatively modern and not worth looking at. Once you travel to the heart of the city, you get a different view. The historic buildings abound and each is edged with a row of bicycles. After living in New Jersey for the last several months, I was astounded by one thing – not a single bike was locked up and not a single bike was stolen. Wow. You can’t find that in the United States…anywhere. I’m from a small town in Arkansas, and my bike was even stolen when I was a kid.

The Royal Palace was quite pretty. I especially enjoyed the palace guards with the tall fuzzy hats. Of course I snapped a few pictures of them, and I’m pretty sure those boys liked it. Otherwise, why would they do the job? There were no events going on at the time of my visit, so there wasn’t much to see at the palace. The flag was not raised, indicating the queen was not in residence at the time. She was, apparently, in another part of the country celebrating the christening of her grandson or something.

After the palace, we walked up the waterfront to the St. Alban’s Church, and the area surrounding. The church and fountain were lovely, and there were trails along the canals in the area offering a break from the crowded streets. On my next trip, I’ll likely go directly to this area and have a picnic for lunch. The church is very near the famous statue of the Little Mermaid, which was a Hans Christian story before Disney butchered it. If you’ve never read the original, you really should give it a read. It’s amazing what liberties Disney takes with changing the content of stories. The statue was pretty and quite small. It looks nothing like Ariel from the movie, so don’t get your hopes up there.

Around the Citidel and Churchill Park there are more great trails for walking and jogging and a stunning old windmill. This was my first time up close and personal with such a windmill, and I was quite impressed. The Citidel seems to be a military complex, but visitors are free to roam around at will. Very different from the U.S. in that respect.

Finally we strolled through the park containing Rosenborg Castle, which is now some sort of museum. I can’t really tell you what the museum contained, as it was closed by the time we got there. It was a nice park, though.

This whole trip took about 4 hours and was a great way to spend a free afternoon in Copenhagen.