COPENHAGEN

An early rise and we headed off on the train to the city.  We tried to buy a 48 hour travel pass via the machines at the station, but they don’t allow you to use either notes or an international credit card.  We went into the 7Eleven to buy a ticket and we believed he charged us about 50 Kroner too much for each ticket, but we could use the ticket the next morning if we went into the city early enough.

So in we went, the trains are really wide – not like Brisbane or the London tubes and they leave every 10 minutes.  We have something to learn from other cities public transport.  Our trains leaving every 30 mins and sometimes every hour is ridiculous compared with all the cities we have visited where they go every 5-10 minutes.  They have special seats where you can rack your bike with it and these have priority over people sitting there.

We had a map from the camping ground and the guy had outlined all the most important things we should see.  So we went to see the ‘Little Mermaid’ first.  It was quite a walk from the station and when we got there, there were quite a few tourist buses (mostly Asian and American).  We were quite disappointed with the small statue that sat in the water on rocks just off the shore.  There was a huge amount of importance placed on the statue which we couldn’t quite figure out why, but it seemed everyone had come to see it.  I did ask at the camp ground why it was so significant for such a small seemly insignificant statue, but they didn’t really know, only that the story of the little mermaid was written by Hans Christian Anderson and he was Denmarks most famous person.  Funny thing was there were other statues around that area that were bigger and more impressive that didn’t even feature on the map.

We then walked to the Kings Palace where there were many people milling around.  I figured they were possibly waiting for the changing of the guard which we were told we had to see at midday, but we weren’t going to stay around for it as it was only mid morning.  And at the end of the day how much was there to see with two men walking up and down next to a building – couldn’t be anything on Buckingham palace surely.

On we walked to the Haven (harbour) where there were lots of cafes and restaurants, canal boats and heaps of people.  It was a very expensive area – like all tourist traps are.  We wanted a coffee, but the price was around $10 a cup which we thought was ridiculous, so we chose a slightly cheaper place.  That comes at a price – the coffee was not great, so wasted the $7-8 it cost for each cup.  Strange thing was the food didn’t seem to be so over priced for this type of area compared with the coffee.

We sat and had our standard home made lunch there after the coffee, watching the ferries come and go.  Sadly the area was quite filthy with rubbish everywhere and it didn’t look like it was being picked up very often at all.  Worst of all were all the cigarette butts lying everywhere.

We wandered from there and went over to the area in town we were told was the oldest Hippie suburb and all the houses had to be hand made.  It was made out to be a huge tourist attraction worthwhile visiting.  The entrance area looked like some kind of slum area and I didn’t feel right about it, but we still walked in and around a small part of it.  The houses if that’s what they wanted to call them, were really just makeshift shacks and it looked like a slum where homeless people lived.  The people who appeared to be living there looked like the most dodgy, shady characters who were no more hippies than we are.  They appeared to be running ‘Green’ cafes even though dope isn’t legal in Denmark.  We wondered whether the cops turned a blind eye to it here.  They had cheap junk for sale and as we looked around I wanted to leave.  I felt very sad for Denmark if this was an area they wanted to flag as a major tourist area that you just had to see.  It was dreadful and I reckon a lot of pickpocketing goes on amongst other rip off activities.

We walked around and saw some of the other historic buildings like a church that you could climb to the top and it had an outside spiral walking ramp you could climb up and see the whole city, but the queue to go up was long and we didn’t want to stay that long.

We wandered through town where there is a round building that belonged to a man who didn’t like stairs.  Apparently there are only about 3 stairs in the whole building, the rest is a huge winding ramp you can walk up between stories, that is wide enough for a horse and cart to go up.

We saw the Cathedral, the Old Stock Exchange, Christiansborg Palace amongst other buildings.

In Denmark you cannot pushbike each way on both sides of the road.  In Netherlands there is a bike lane on each side of the road that is split into two and you can bike both ways on both sides.  In Denmark you can only bike on the same side as the traffic goes.  We got into trouble near the campsite a couple of times biking the wrong way – but we didn’t know and there isn’t anything telling us that this is the case.  People just yelled at us in Danish of course as we were biking and we just looked at them, puzzled, not knowing what their problem was.  Now we know!

A day walking around the city is very tiring on the body so we left feeling quite exhausted.

We went back in early the next morning so we could use our train ticket again before it ran out.  We decided to do what we had done in Amsterdam and just walk around the city streets having a look rather than specifically looking for the main buildings.  We went past the Tivoli which is a very old fun park.  It had the typical rides, with ones like the chairoplane that not only goes round, but goes up really high.  The had like boats on long arms that did full circles backwards and forwards – enough to make you sick watching let alone going on it.  As we were walking along one part of the street Scot noticed dope growing in the flower beds in the middle of the city.  The plants weren’t grown enough for anyone to use and there was a gardener there who appeared to be pulling out all the weeds including the dope plants (probably to take home for himself….lol).

A lot of the buildings are really lovely with moulded characters and designs.  This time we found a much cheaper coffee place where the coffee was really good.  It wasn’t on a square or in a tourist area.  I bought some raspberries that were $2 a punnet, but they got quite squashed carrying them all day.  We stopped in Orsted park for lunch.  There was a lady and her daughter who were walking their Bengal cat in the park – what a gorgeous cat it was.  It was like a small leopard in the jungle.

We found more things just by walking where ever we wanted rather than following a map.  We found a food hall similar to the one in Rotterdam, just not in an amazing building like there, but with all types of foods being sold.  Lucky we had already eaten!

At the end of the day we took the train back but we were naughty – we thought since we had been overcharged for our ticket the day before and there wasn’t anyone checking tickets we ran the gauntlet back to the campsite.  Murphys law prevails…..we were asked by inspectors to see our tickets so we had to do some quick thinking and talk our way out of why our ticket wasn’t valid.  Scot said I looked as guilty as hell. I am not good at lying, but they let us away with it.  I guess there isn’t much point charging a tourist when you aren’t going to get any money out of them.  And anyway, at the end of the day we did pay what we should have for both days so they didn’t actually miss any money.

We went into a shopping centre near the campsite to buy a couple of things and what a huge shopping centre it was.  From the outside they don’t advertise that it is a shopping centre and you wouldn’t know what it was if you hadn’t been told.  They aren’t like us where there are neon signs everywhere showing what is inside.

Whilst we were at this camping ground the showers were an issue (well actually it wasn’t the first one).  There were about 300+ campers at this camping ground and there were only 6 toilets for females, 6 for males and 4 showers for the entire camp.  So in the morning showers were at a premium, so we had to get up very early in order to beat the rush and have one.  It wasn’t really a problem because we wanted to leave early anyway, but I don’t know why camp grounds get away with not having enough facilities for the amount of people they have staying.

We had a Norwegian van pull up on the other side of us at the campsite late that afternoon so after dinner we decided to go and talk to them about roads and places to see in Norway.  Laura and Knut were a lovely couple who told us heaps about Norway.  We are going to hopefully go and have a cuppa with them when we get up to Bergen on our travels.  Although they didn’t believe their English was that good, it was very good and we were easily understood.  Their English was a lot better than our Norweigan (we know none !…lol). Talking to them also allowed them to practice their English.

Copenhagen did have some lovely historical buildings and some really neat little shopping streets where the shops were partly below the street level.  It is definitely an interesting city to visit, but you can’t really compare it to other cities as they all have their own character.

The next morning we packed up, said goodbye to our new friends Knut and Laura and headed for Helsingor and the ferry across to Sweden.