Our second and final stop in Denmark. As we had an early(for us !) start today, we took advantage of room service for breakfast in our cabin. Life is so tough!! We headed down to the meeting point and then onto the bus for the tour. First impressions were of a clean, well cared for city. Many of the buildings around the dock area were old (300 years +) military ones which had been renovated for commercial or dwelling purposes, but had maintained their original character.
Our first stop was at the quayside for a boat tour of the Harbor area. Copenhagen has a rich and long naval history which is still preserved today.
In the picture above, as well as a 20th century ship now used as a museum , there is a structure to the left that is a crane dating back 400 years that is made entirely of wood and ws used to lift masts into the old wooden sailing ships.
Following the Battle of Coenhagen in 1807 when the British “borrowed” the Danish fleet to prevent Napoleon getting his hands on them, the Danish had to rebuild, they could not afford large battle ships so they built large numbers of small single cannon boats. These were built and stored in long sheds. These sheds still exist and have been converted into homes or businesses.
One of the taller buildings visible from the water is the Church of Our Saviour, completed in 1697. The stairs to the top of the tower are all outside. Although we didn’t try it we were told that on a windy day the climb is quite scary as the all wooden structure sways quite a bit!
There are many very nice, and some not so nice, houseboats all around the harbour.
In some places the view was very reminiscent of Amsterdam
Denmark has a constitutional Monarchy, and where there are Monarchs there are palaces.
Many of the new buildings along the water front have been designed by world famous architects.
The BLOX building above was built to commemorate Lego (a Danish invention)
From the boat we went back to the bus for more of the city tour. T
The city is in a battle with Amsterdam for the most bicycle friendly city, a title it held until a few years ago. As a result many streets are being made bike only, meaning there is nowhere for the cars to ago, hence very slow traffic.
Above is Copenhagen’s most expensive Hotel, rooms start at $1300 US per night
Around the dock area there is reclaimed land to be used for housing, again the housing is designed by famous architects, giving a wide variety of styles.
Finally we went to visit Copenhagen’s famous Little Mermaid, unveiled in 1913 and based on a Hans Christian Andersencharacter
I still have to learn how to take pictures into strong sunlight!
The second picture is a little better, I used a bit of AI to remove a couple of humans who were in the picture.
That’s it for today, it’s beer o’clock!