The short one hour flight to Copenhagen was uneventful (tho the A/C was not turned on until take off and it was really hot in there!) Met our driver and headed to Bryggen Guldsmenen Hotel where we have a family suite: 2 bedrooms and a living area. It is nice to spread out a bit after Amsterdam where we were a little cramped. We dropped off our luggage and headed to find some lunch. This area is more residential than where we stayed in Amsterdam so we had to walk a bit farther but found a sidewalk cafe where the Caesar Salads were very good. (Caesar Salad seems to be on every menu.) We then got settled in the hotel and grabbed an Uber to go to a canal tour. The canals here are much wider than Amsterdam (tho the bridges are just about as low!) Copenhagen is a delightful mix of old and new: many modern buildings interlaced with ones from the 1800’s (many buildings were destroyed by fires in the 1700’s). Everyone here seems to speak English and with no accent so very easy to understand. Actually the same was true in Amsterdam. 

From the canal tour, we were able to see the back of the Little Mermaid.

Dinner at our hotel was very good and our waitress was delightful with a great sense of humor and fun. She ended up comping 3 glasses of Prosecco for Jackie (her drink of choice) and then gave us a brand new bottle to take back to our room! 

Tuesday found us at Christiansborg Castle. Copenhagen has a bunch of castles. There are 5 currently! Christiansenborg Castle is built on top of 4 others!! It reminds me of a Monty Python skit: “When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that’s what you’re going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England. It was very cool that they excavated and preserved the ruins. Some used the old ruins to build on for a new castle.

We really wanted to try Smorrebrods. For lunch we found an area with lots of street cafes and picked one. When it came time to order, the sandwiches looked better than the Smorrebrods so that is what we got. Jackie and Paul shared a beef, onion, horseradish sandwich which was basically the same ingredients of the Smorrebrods. I ordered smoked salmon, cream, cheese, red onions. It was one of the best sandwiches I have ever had! I was so sad when it was gone!!!

After lunch we cruised around a shopping area that started with Tiffany, Louis Vuitton, etc then changed into normal people shops. We arrived at Tivoli Gardens around 3pm. Tivoli is hard to explain: it is an amusement park and a gardens and an entertainment venue. It costs about $20 to just tour the grounds. Lots of pretty flower gardens, etc. And the rides were cool looking, kind of old fashioned and colorful and some different rides we had never seen before. There were lots of restaurants, and food kiosks, and games, and retail shops, You could spend a bloody fortune. We walked around for a while then sat and people watched while sipping an Aperol Spritz. So daylight lasts until about 11pm right now so all of the cool old time lights lining the pathways, etc, we would not be able to see. 

We headed back to the hotel and had pizza/sandwiches delivered for dinner. They are big on French Fries both here and in Amsterdam. They are all served with some kind of mayonnaise. All the fries I have tried have been very good.