Week 183 – Copenhagen – JC Travels -The Blog

First trip to Denmark for me – was raining on landing and raining on take off 2 days later but good weather in between so we lucked out. Nice city but expensive. I accidentally got out more cash than expected at the ATM and was “worried” I’d lose money on the exchange rate swapping back – no issue on swapping back as we easily exhausted the cash. Copenhagen is not a $50/day “all in” place to go. Beer about $12.

Annelise joined along and with my leg (still in boot from torn achilles) our touring options limited and we got a tour that took us right to the primary places to visit. We had a good guide who was studying similar courses to Annelise so interesting discussion on the EU and where Denmark stood in the world. Its now a small country of 5 million but at one time was much larger.

City Tour

***The Little Mermaid statue – not sure why this is one of the top attractions***

**Charlottenborg Palace – first three kings**

***Art exhibit – lifejackets from the Mediterranean***

***Christianhvan – Hvan is canal. Next to hippie place with upscale boats and housing.***

***Charlottenborg Palace on the right and the exotic trade market (from 1700s) on left.***

**The most photographed tree in Denmark. Next to Vor Frelsers Kirke. Staircase on outside….although I could climb up, couldn’t get down**

**View to Amalienborg backside and Frederik Church**

***Really good food market – lots of choices – but as the guide said “either very expensive or just expensive”***

**Amalienborg Palace – four identical palaces for the Royal family**

Helsingør

Denmark is also the most direct connection to my family roots as great great great grandparents came over in 1850s from there (everyone else way before that from somewhere else) and my mom has done much research into our family tree so I knew the towns from which they came. It was unclear in the records whether they were Danish, German, or Prussian but reality was they lived in the the same two regions for 200 years but the regions were under different rulers in different periods of time. One is still Danish territory – Maribo and one is now German – Olden Holstein. We asked out AirBNB host and tour guide if we should go and they both said “not much there – everyone has left” and no trains to get there. So on a future visit we will go. Instead we went to Helsingør which is the largest castle in Denmark and scene for a play called “Hamlet”. Most people going were very excited for the Hamlet.”

Freestate of Christiania

**Christiania – main area. The hippies took over abandoned military housing in 1970s.**

Saturday night we went to the “Freestate of Christiania” – a hippie commune from the 1970s that continues today. It was like going into a dystopian movie set – no pictures are allowed because of the amount of weed that is being sold in open air markets, Police generally don’t bother them but can and stoners are paranoid. Got a beer from a shack where the benches for tables were from old car back seats. Still $12, I guess I didn’t get the commune price. Attached pictures from web.