James and Amber had told us wonderful
things about Copenhagen, so we decided to take a look for ourselves. A brief, comfortable Ryan Air flight followed
by a short train journey took us to the Grand Hotel in the heart of Copenhagen. The hotel must have once been grand however
the grandeur has somewhat faded now.
Nevertheless, our room was comfortable and we were situated right next
to the Tivoli Gardens.
Lunch was the first thing on our agenda so
we headed straight to the Tivoli Gardens for a Danish hotdog. The Tivoli is the second oldest amusement
park in the world, operating since 1843 (the oldest, amusement park is located
in Klampenborg, Denmark which opened in 1583) and is a fun place to visit for
both adults and children. There are
amusement rides set amongst beautiful gardens with lakes and fountains and
peacocks strolling amid the crowds.
There are also shops and restaurants and we had a lovely time wandering
the area. In fact, we loved it so much
that we visited the gardens 3 times over the course of our stay. In the summer time, a huge fireworks display
is held every Saturday night and we had put it on our list of things to do,
until we found out that the display didn’t start until 11.45pm due to the fact
that it doesn’t get dark until then.
Michael and I are well and truly in bed by that time so we reluctantly
gave that a miss!
We took a canal tour, which was a relaxing
way to experience the harbour and canals and it was interesting to see the
mixture of old and new architecture along the way. We saw the famous statue of the Little
Mermaid, which only days before our arrival had been drenched in red paint in
protest of the hunting of pilot whales around the North Atlantic islands that
are under Danish control. Luckily for
us, the statue had been cleaned by the time we saw her. It wasn’t the first time that the statue has
been vandalised and I don’t suppose that it will be the last. We also saw the Danish frigate HDMS Peder
Skram, which is famous for accidentally firing a Harpoon missile in 1982,
severing power lines and destroying four unoccupied summer cottages and
damaging a further 130 buildings.
Luckily no one was injured and the incident has become known as the
“whoopsie missile”.
The next day was a bit drizzly but not
enough to discourage us from walking around the city. We had a look at the Design Museum, which was
interesting before heading to the Glyptoteket.
This museum houses an impressive collection of ancient art including
Greek and Roman statues and Egyptian mummies.
There is also a large collection of French artworks by artists such as
Manet, Monet, Degas, van Gogh, Cezanne and Rodin. We spent a lovely couple of hours admiring
the different works.
In the afternoon, we visited the Carlsberg
Brewery. The tour was self guided, which
I enjoyed, as I really didn’t want to attend another guided tour of a brewery
(there are only so many times one can listen to the story of how beer is
made). Once again, the stables were a
highlight, as were able to get up close to the draught horses and were able to
see one of the horses being washed down.
The tour ended with the obligatory tasting, which Michael enjoyed
immensely. We then took a walk around
the outside of the brewery to see the original gates with the immense statues
of the elephants.
The next day was filled with glorious
sunshine and we set out to explore more of the city (after our breakfast of
Danish pastries). We strolled though the
beautiful gardens of Frederiksberg until we came to the Copenhagen Zoo. We hadn’t intended to visit the zoo, however
it was such a lovely day we decided to have a look. It was a good size zoo, well laid out and
with a large variety of animals. My
favourite part of the day was watching the polar bear swimming. There was a large Tasmanian exhibit, which
housed kangaroos, wombats and Tasmanian devils.
We couldn’t help noticing the severed horse’s head lying in the middle
of the devil enclosure. It was
especially disconcerting as the very next exhibit contained the horses. The sight of the severed head called up a
distant memory of a dismembered giraffe, which I later checked on the
Internet. It was Copenhagen Zoo that
caused a controversy in 2014 when it killed Marius, a healthy, young giraffe,
publicly dissected him and fed his parts to the zoo lions. The following year the zoo killed a young
lion before once again publicly dissecting it.
I guess the Danes are not squeamish about such things.
We were enjoying the sunshine so much that
we took another canal cruise to see a little more of the city. Copenhagen really is an attractive, well-planned
city and it was interesting listening to the guide’s commentary.
Later that afternoon we visited the
Christiansborg Palace, which is still used by the Royal Family for various
functions and events as well as being the seat of the Danish Parliament, the
Prime Minister’s Office and the Supreme Court.
The Royal Receptions Rooms are richly adorned with furniture and works of
art. The Great Hall contains 17 tapestries
recounting the history of Denmark and presented to Queen Margrethe on her 50th
birthday by the Danish business community.
It was all very interesting and we were also able to view the ruins of
the previous palaces underneath the existing palace. Naturally, we exited through the gift shop
and it was fascinating to see the amount of souvenirs with Princess Mary’s face
on them. Princess Mary is a bit of a
cult figure in Denmark not unlike the Princess of Wales was in her time. It is interesting to note that the Danes do
not refer to her as being Australian but rather as being Tasmanian.
Dinner that night was a real treat as James
had recommended a wonderful restaurant for us to try. It was called Vakst and the heart of the
restaurant was a large greenhouse, which was built up between two floors. The food was Nordic and unbelievably good and
was presented beautifully. My dessert
was green strawberries – divine!
We absolutely loved our time in Copenhagen
and would definitely like to return again, perhaps in the wintertime to see how
different the city would look.
