As I mentioned in my previous posting, Shawn and Erin arrived around noon on Saturday. Despite flying first class and having seats that reclined to a completely horizontal position, they were rather tired. After having a nap on my floor we headed out to see some of the city. It was an extremely hot day for Copenhagen (over 30 degrees). We spent a couple of hours walking around the city core and taking in the atmosphere of the city. With the hot weather and the Jazz festival everyone in Copenhagen out. After returning to my place and having dinner Shawn fell asleep at 9pm.
Sunday morning, I am laying in bed half asleep, but can hear Shawn and Erin chatting. I figure I should probably wake up so I open one eye and look at my watch. It is 5:45am! When I ask them whether they realize what time it is they say it must be around 8 or 9 am due to how bright the sun is. They are a little surprised to learn it is 5:45 in the morning. Shawn has had his 8 hours of sleep and is ready to get started on the day. I, on the other hand was not ready to go to sleep at 9 pm and stayed up for another couple of hours so I am a bit tired.
Eventually we head out at the more civilized time of 8:30. Despite waiting until 8:30, the streets of Copenhagen are still deserted. Apparently Copenhageners don’t feel any need to start their Sunday mornings too early. We head for the little mermaid statue. I figure at this time of morning it should be relatively quiet around there and we might be able to actually see it, unlike last time when I went and it was surrounded by tourists on all sides as shown in the photo below. I was completely mistaken, it was even more of a zoo than last time. The cruise ships dock nearby and all the passengers were just getting off for a day in Copenhagen and all of them go past it on their way to the other sites. Unfortunately I do not have many photos to share with you this time since Shawn and Erin are currently at Legoland and Shawn did most of the picture taking.
Sunday was jam packed with visits to the fortress (originally built to protect Denmark from attacks by Sweden), the Museum of Danish Resistance (all about the Danish efforts to resist German occupation during World War II), various fountains and squares around the city, the National museum, and seeing the ruins of the castles/palaces build over the years and now preserved under a newer palaces. We also had a fabulous lunch complete with warm bakery bread in one of the parks. My Guide unit has a flat Guide, Holly who decided to join us for lunch.
I took Monday off work to spend more time with Shawn and Erin. We decided to head to Roskilde, about 40 km from the city core of Copenhagen to see the Viking Ship Museum. It has 5 actual ships that were recovered from the bottom of the harbour. They have been preserved and are now on display. There is also a large collection of replica ships that are all floating in the harbour. The Vikings are a truly amazing and fascinating group of people. Viking ships are completely open and have no shelter from the elements. Last summer, a crew sailed one of the replica ships to Ireland. The ship has been on display there for the last year and it is now being sailed back to Denmark. There were some pretty amazing pictures of the trip last summer with the crew living on board. Apparently you can follow their return journey on-line, but I can’t remember the website’s address. They will arrive in Denmark on August 9th. I am sure it will be an amazing sight to see, but I will be having my own watery adventure in Norway at that point.Once again, I apologize for the lack of photos. I have tried to convince Shawn to write a guest post for my blog, but have had no success. I will try and convince him to post some photos once he gets home, but no guarantees.
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