Wonderful Copenhagen.
We are now in Copenhagen the capital of Denmark. It is a
cloudy dull day and rain is forecasted. We have decided to do our own thing and
to get our bearings in a city this size, we have decided to catch the Copenhagen
Hop on Hop off bus.
This is the end of one cruise and about 2/3 of the
passengers are leaving the ship. The rest of us who will stay on board for a
further 12 days are venturing into Copenhagen either by ourselves or on tours.
Information from the ship about what is happening today is very limited.
The ship has moored at a new terminal some kilometres from
the city and the Ho Ho bus has come out to the terminal to pick us up. Try and imagine this picture – 30+ geriatrics
- a mixture of male and female from several different countries are perched on
the top deck of the red hop on hop off bus– no one knows where they are and no
one knows where they are going. We have been waiting over half an hour and it
does not look like this bus is going to move till it is full. Most of the males
have a map and they are all trying to understand where the places they want to
see, where the routes go, what the stop numbers mean and where they are now. No
one seems to be seeing the same thing on the map. Everyone has a different
version of what they have been told.
By this stage most people are engaged in the same
conversation. Where are we going??? What did he say??? How much did you pay???
Can we change routes??? What is the blue bus route??? No the blue route is the
canal boat ride!!! We have been told that to get back to the ship you have to
go to the Little Mermaid stop and catch a green shuttle bus. If I heard this
question once I heard it twenty times – Is this the bus that takes us back to
the ship??? No the green shuttle bus. Oh – but where do we catch that??? At the
little Mermaid. Oh – How do we get there??? Stop 6. Oh – Where’s stop 6??? We
rode around for about 1 hour seeing the sights but with this conversation
continuing most of the time and I have not laughed so much for years. When we
eventually decided to get off the bus and start walking, l still heard people
saying “I think we will just stay on this bus –at least we will get back to the
ship!!!” I must admit that I did wonder how many of these people would not find
their way back to the ship before it sailed at 4 o’clock.
Copenhagen is a very pretty city. It is perfectly flat, so
push bikes are a very popular mode of transport. We started our self-guided
walk up at the Tivoli Gardens and then headed to the old City Hall. We intend
to transit the main centre of the city from south to north.
Hans Christian Anderson was a famous writer from this City
and there are streets etc. named after him and there are many statues depicting
and dedicated to him. We visited a special Hans Christian Anderson shop that
was full of his memorabilia and this is where we brought our postcards as there
are no other shops open because it is Sunday. It is very quiet for such a major
city.
We spent some time walking beside the canals and watching
the many tourist boats giving visitors to the city rides. We visited the
Christiansburg Castle which is home to the Parliament, Supreme Court and the
Prime minister’s office and we stood in amazement and photographed the many
historical monuments of famous Danish Historical Leaders perched on the back of
horses.
The prettiest area and the main centre for tourists is the
Nyhavn Canal district which is a lively waterfront district lined with colourful
500 year old gabled houses, historical wooden ships, sidewalk café and bars. We
ventured further and had lunch in a pretty little park that was lined with
well-manicured trees, with under-plantings of white tulips and dark blue
violas. The weather was threatening all day. The skies were dark and we had a
few short showers. It made taking photos difficult.
We then walked to the Amalienboug Palace complex which is
the winter home for the Danish Royal Family. It comprised of four large palaces
that faced on to a large square which had a massive statue of Fredrick 11 on horseback
in the centre of it. Royal flags on top of the palaces indicated whether the
royal residents were at home or not. There where palace guards standing on duty
outside each palace. They looked splendid standing outside their red sentry
boxes in their uniforms. At one end of this large area was a huge Cathedral
with a large green dome and many huge statues, it was a magnificent building.
The gardens we walk through are full with beautiful lilacs in
many shades of purples and whites and their fragrance fills the air and there
are many swans and ducks floating peacefully along the canals.
THE LITTLE MERMAID.
Would you believe that the Eurodam actually sailed right on
4pm and not one passenger missed the sail away. The funny thing was that the
green shuttle bus ended up being a yellow shuttle bus – so this goes to prove, you
cannot rely 100% on anything. It just proves that when you travel you have to
be flexible, have your wits about you and use your common sense and most
importantly of all make sure you get back to the ship on time.
THE NYHAVN AREA
No comments:
Post a Comment