With a busy day ahead, I got up early to get ready to go to Copenhagen with my parents. Having fallen asleep last night without cleaning up and packing, I tackled those tasks this morning. With all of my stuff packed for the trips to Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Barcelona, as well as Icelandia straightened up, I left to meet my parents at Hotel Statt, where they were staying.
From there, I took them on the Hässleholm grand tour. We walked around the shopping area of downtown, up to the church, to Göingevallen, and back to the square by way of the heritage park. While not all of Hässleholm, that is the part of town I have become most accustomed to and spent most of my time. My parents enjoyed seeing where I have been and seemed to like this nice, quiet town.
We collected our things and headed to the train station. Lucas met us there to take the keys to Icelandia in the event anybody needed access to it while I was away. And then the traveling began.
We would be staying in Copenhagen one night at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, located between Copenhagen Central Station and Kastrup Airport about a block away from the Ørestad stop, across from the Field's shopping mall (the largest shopping mall in Scandinavia, which we amazingly did not enter!).
The hotel was a large tower that had been open for less than a year. It was very modern and had a large conference area, apparently hosting an energy company this weekend. We checked in and headed into Copenhagen to do some sightseeing.
Our first stop was Rosenborg Slot. A Renaissance style castle in the center of Copenhagen, it served as a summerhouse for Christian IV and now is a museum and holds some crown jewels.
In fact, this fellow and another gentleman were pacing and, I think, keeping guard of the crown jewels. I'm not sure how safe they are, though. My dad said hello and the guy above answered "hey" in a pretty resigned tone. The other guard had tourists walking all around him and through his supposed path of march. I don't think many tourists were very impressed or intimidated. Maybe it was his posture.
Looking out over the moat that surrounds Rosenborg, you can see nothing but the vast garden that surrounds it and Copenhagen skyline. It was nice to imagine being a king and vacationing at such a beautiful place, strolling through the garden and enjoying being rich. It must've been good to be the king.
Also on the grounds at Rosenborg is a barracks that still houses members of the Royal Life Guards (ie the guy in the previous picture).
We walked through the Rosenborg gardens and made our way to the Danish Resistance Museum.
I had been before, but I really liked it and thought my parents would also find it interesting. They seem interested enough, here, checking out some information on the Danish resisters and the Gestapo.
After the Resistance Museum we walked along the harbor. Instead of naval vessels docked like the last time I was here with George, we saw this enormous private yacht, the Skat, that is owned and partly designed by Charles Simonyi, a former Microsoft software engineer.
From the harbor we walked up through Amalienborg Palace, where we learned that royalty was in residence. We continued to Frederik's Church, a huge, all marble domed church a few blocks from Amalienborg Square that was begun by King Frederik V.
Our tour of Copenhagen continued as we went to Nyhavn next. It was such a beautiful day and tourists and locals alike were taking advantage as the beautiful harbor was really bustling.
After our stroll along Nyhavn we followed the Strøget, the longest pedestrian shopping are in Europe. It goes roughly from Nyhavn to the Rådshuspladsen, or town square, where we saw an interesting performance.
I'm not sure if they were Native Americans in Denmark or Native Danes or what, but they were playing some very Native American sounding music and dancing. As you can see, they also were dressed for the performance. Unexpected for sure, but interesting nonetheless.
Somewhat blasphemously, we had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, Copenhagen. Our waitress was a very outgoing and energetic Swede who spoke great english, like much of the staff, I noticed. Also, I have to admit, I had one of the best hamburgers in my entire life. It was great to sit down, read a menu in english, and know EXACTLY what I was getting to eat. It's the little things.
After dinner we headed into Tivoli Gardens, the oldest amusement park in Europe. Walt Disney got his inspiration for Disneyland after visiting Tivoli.
No rides, but a nice walk around the Gardens. It is kind of like a scaled down Disneyland, or, rather, Disneyland is like a supersized Tivoli. Tired, we returned to our hotel after a full day of sightseeing.
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