the starrs: Copenhagen, Denmark

Since we missed spending the holidays/birthdays/anniversary together this year while Thomas was deployed, we put money into our travel fund rather than buying presents for each other...and our reward was a Baltic cruise! We flew into Malmö, Sweden and took the bus across the bridge to start our trip in Copenhagen, Denmark. We got to the city in the late afternoon so we quickly found our hotel, dropped our bags, fueled up with some McDonalds (Thomas likes checking out the McDonald's in different countries) and started a self-guided walking tour from Rick Steves' Scandinavia book. We would've been lost without this book, it was amazing! Thankfully it is light outside so late here now, so we still had plenty of time to explore before the sun went down at 11pm.

We saw Tivoli Gardens (Europe's first public amusement park), City Hall, walked through the Strøget (lots of shopping!), saw the Cathedral of our Lady, and made it to Copenhagen University. Once we got to this part of the city we noticed there were a lot more people in the streets, lots of drinking, and loud bursts of techno music. When we popped into a shop selling all kinds of American sports hats the salesperson told us the street festival "Distortion" was taking place for the next five days. Our walking tour took us right through the heart of this festival, and it was awesome! There was just tons of music, drinking, and although there were so many people it was still a nice atmosphere - everyone was very friendly and not a lot of pushing/shoving. We grabbed a couple of beers and enjoyed the scene!

We kept going on our walking tour and made it to my favorite part of the city, Nyhavn. This is the canal area with all of the colorful houses/shops on either side, and old boats moored all around. Hans Christian Andersen's old house was on one side of the canal also. We kept going out to the harbor, saw the Royal Danish Theatre's Playhouse, and the beautiful Opera House across the way, as well as Amaliehaven Park which led to Amalieborg Palace where Queen Margaret II lives. It was all so picturesque, we were having so much fun just wandering around! We walked through Kastellet Park, where we saw a cute little church and the Gefion Statue. It took us a while (and a stop to ask for directions), but we finally found the Little Mermaid Statue. Our guide book warned that the statue was the "overrated, overfondled, and over photographed symbol of Copenhagen". We saw it, we photographed it (we didn't fondle it though!), and started to head back in the direction of the hotel, with a stop for ice cream along the way. We got quite lost on the way back to the hotel and somehow ended up in the suburbs of Copenhagen, but we eventually made our way back, phew! We were very impressed with Copenhagen, it was beautiful and every single person we encountered was so friendly and helpful, especially when we had to ask for directions. We definitely enjoyed our time in Copenhagen!