HD7: Copenhagen, Denmark

9.11.12 It was the devil to pay when we awoke two hours later and quickly dressed, cleaned up, and packed as the ship docked into Copenhagen, Denmark. All my life I’ve wanted to visit this city as I’ve heard it’s stunning: I wasn’t disappointed. The tour bus’s first stop was Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” statue, the original of which was stolen; the second cast was beheaded, until this third cast replaced its predecessors. Next, we had a few minutes in the palace square which has Amalienborg Palace at its centre and is dominated by the dome of Frederik's Church (The Marble Church) and several elegant 18th century mansions. I took a picture with a palace guard, who wore a tall furry hat reminiscent of the Buckingham Palace guards. After this, we were set at liberty to explore the city on our own. We wandered the beautiful, clean, historic streets of downtown Copenhagen, particularly the main pedestrian shopping district. The architecture is gorgeous old European style with stone sidewalks and cobble stone streets, broken up by intricate stone bridges over the many canals that snake through the city. I instantly fell in love. We found a small pizza place for lunch, we shopped for souvenirs in quaint shops, and tried our darndest to not let our exhaustion damper our experience. Fortunately, this wasn’t too difficult as everywhere we looked we saw beautiful, scrumptious European men with the ultimate European swag. I’ve never been in a city so full of beauty—the architecture, the landscape, the canals, the shops, the men…. Yes, please, and thank you. Our goals for the day were a boat tour of the city and the Christianborg Palace, but it turned out we only had time for the boat tour. Although I was disappointed we didn’t make it inside the palace, the boat tour was fantastic and enabled us to see so much of the city, including old factories, palaces, statues, monuments, and Nyhavn, the 17th century harbour with its famous colourful buildings and period ships and sailboats. Nyhavn (pronounced new-haven) was the main harbour in the 17th century and leads into the main canal that slithers throughout the city. This canal was the main trading route within the city and allowed imported and exported goods to move more quickly to their destinations. By the time we landed, the Christianborg Palace (which is now a museum) had closed to visitors, so we found a pastry shop and helped ourselves to raspberry Danishes—because we were in Denmark! It had begun to rain, so I also ordered a cup of hot cocoa; although it warmed me up, it was bitter like dark chocolate. The rain had come with nightfall, and the glowing shop windows and random Christmas lights painted a rather stunning portrait of the city. As we wandered the pedestrian district for the last time, a man played hauntingly beautiful melodies on the violin and the night was altogether romantic. For the heck of it, we decided to check out what we could of the Christianborg Palace. The doors were locked, but the square was empty so we sat on the steps and chatted. Whitney and Shelley decided to impersonate Danish guards and patrolled the door while taking gigantic, awkward steps; then Whitney performed for us her cheer routine from high school. If there were cameras, the security guards were no doubt having the time of their lives watching us embarrass ourselves; we certainly were sleep deprived. It was then time to return to our bus; I could have stayed a week in that gorgeous city, but my body argued that it would just sleep that entire week, so I was grateful to sit in a warm, dry, padded seat. Besides not visiting the Christianborg Palace museum, my only other regret is not visiting the LDS Temple; it looks so interesting in pictures and I’ve always wanted to see it in person. However, like most of the European temples, it’s on the outskirts of the city and would have been difficult/taken a long time to reach. Oh well; someday I’ll get there, I’m sure of it.