Now that I've relocated my lovely keyboard, I can continue blogging. We left off on our walking tour of Copenhagen, which had already depleted much of our collective energy sources.
The next portion of our walking tour started at Denmark's biggest department store. It's not that we were in a particularly shoppy mode, but rather because our tour guide told us there were free samples on Fridays. Considering how expensive food is here and how much we like food, the prospect of free food excited us. We pictured things akin to Costco. It wasn't. We found like one chocolate covered almond and some green grapes. They were delicious green grapes, but not nearly what we were expeted. This stop wasn't much of a bust, however, because we were able to locate Danish pastries. Soo good.
Next, we took everyone to Nyhavn harbor and did another walk down that path. Not everyone had seen it the first time around. Also, we wanted to take a waterbus over to Christianhavn to see Christiania and the Our Savior Church. Christianhavn is a neighborhood that used to be pretty run down and full of hippies. Of late, it's become a more gentrified and expensive. It started raining as soon as we got off of the water bus, so that was fun. This meant that instead of spending more time looking at the church, which is this really tall church with a gold (or gold-plated) spiral staircase on the top, we ran by it looking for nearby shelter.
Then, we made it to Christiania. You may have heard about this place. I guess it plays a big part in the most recent season of Weeds. It's a little hippy city (or I think they consider themselves a country) within Copenhagen that houses a commune of anarchists, hippies, and junkies. If not, you should definitely look it up on Google or Wikipedia. A lot of us were really excited about seeing it. Personally, I was expecting to see something akin to Hair (the musical), where stoned hippies would jump around songs....or something.
Yeah it wasn't like that. In part, because of the rain, the atmosphere was kind of gloomy. And instead of a cheerful happy place, it was actually a litlte intimidating. It made Amsterdam seem like Disneyland. The people there weren't particularly friendly. Although the place makes a lot of its income from tourists, they don't really seem happy about us being there. It took me a long time to get some souveniers because the woman was talking on the phone and smoking pot. The main street, Pusher Street, is another experience. Oh Christiania.
It did have a bit of a hippy-ish feeling to it and would have made for some cool photos, but they've got a very strict no photo policy going on therer :( Anyway, while it didn't quite live up to my expectations, it was an intersting experience (to say the least) and, well, like Amsterdam's Red Light District, it is a big thing to see in Copenhagen. The local governments been trying to get rid of it for years because that property is now valuable, so better to see it before its gone.
From Christianhaven, we made our way over through the Parliament buildings, past the National Museum, and to Tivoli Gardens.
Tivoli Gardens is the second oldest amusement park in the world and is, apparently, the inspiration for Disneyland. It uses a different entrance fee system from many other major amusement parts, where you pay a base fee to get into the park and then you have to pay for tickets to go on the rides. They also have a number of other attractions. I think the symphony plays there every once in a while. There are free concerts in the summer. When we were there, we saw the tail end of some bizarre ballet show.
We were hungry, though, so we started by eating at this restaurant, Wagamama. I was freezing from the rain in Christianhavn, so I got some ramen. It was okay. For the first time, ever, I had ramen broth that was not salty enough. I actually had to add soy sauce. Chris got some pretty good yakisoba.
We grabbed a couple of other rides after that. James, Mia, and Jimmy did some ride that span around and upside down. I wish I could post the video of them screaming onto this blog through this app because it was hilarious. Although James was quiet, both Mia and Jimmy were screaming and crying on the ride. It's great.
The only other ride we checked out before leaving was a H.C. Anderson-themed ride.* It was kind of like the rides that you'd see in Fantasyland and walks you through many of his most famous stories, such as LIttle Mermaid, the Little Matchstick Girl, the Ugly Duckling, and the like. An interesting story we learned about him from our tour this morning is that when he eventually hit it big, he was excited because some of his favorrite authors might write back. He wrote to Charles Dickens, one of his favorites, and Dickens invited him to stay a few days or a week or something. Apparently, HC ended up staying around for 6 weeks, much to Dickens' dismay. Needless to say, Dickens never responded to any letters from HC.
Nothing big really happened on the walk back to the hostel. We got ice cream and walked down the major pedestrian street again. There's a big pedestrian only street in Copenhagen that is apparently the first of its kind. There are a lot of expensive shops, tourist shops, kebab stands, and ice cream shops along the way. It also houses our favorite Chinese stand from our first night.
We're going to try to see The Little Mermaid later, but we also have to manage to drag all of our many bags to the port. The first stop on the cruise is Berlin. I think I'm the tour guide, so I guess I need to figure out our itinerary there.
The one thing I wish we were able to see would have been the Kronbberg Castle (also known as Elsinore for you Shakespeare fans).
