Copenhagen, Denmark (Day 1)
The docking at Copenhagen was very late, so we had a long line-up of morning programs and classes to attend. Fiona's port shopping seminar was surprisingly sparsely attended--normally you either get there half an hour early or you don't get a seat. We went to a cooking demo where a young, handsome, single (as established very early in the Q&A segment) polyglot chef made Rouladen, and were disappointed (in a sense) to find that the guest talent show had been cancelled for lack of interest. We grabbed an early lunch and finished up the thank-you notes, and made the big decision not to return to the ship for dinner. We had exactly two cards remaining after the thank-yous were done, so we wrote notes for our tablemates thanking them for their company and offering the URLs of our wedding site and my kodakgallery.com page. Moments after I carefully labeled them with the seating and table number, Janet and Tom happened to walk by, so I just handed them to them.
Once we'd docked, our first destination was the Little Mermaid. Why? Because it's required. She was dwarfed by tourists, just like when I was in Copenhagen in high school, and Greg was as unimpressed as I had been in high school. Having checked that off the list, we continued into town. We passed a fountain I remembered from high school, then visited the Freiheit Museet. Although it was interesting and well-organized, we didn't really find it to be as effective as the Norwegian equivalent. As I expressed it at the time, "When we left the Norwegian Resistance Museum, I think I had a pretty good idea of where Norway stood during the war. I'm not getting that here." On the up side, it was free.
Even without an organized tour, we knew where the important stuff was when we stumbled upon a clot of people with Celebrity Cruises stickers. That's how we found the Amalienborg castle, and nearby, the Marble Church. We continued into the heart of town, passing the cafes of Nyhavn and through massive shopping districts closed to vehicles. I was looking for a particular landmark from my 1990 visit: a huge thermometer on the side of a building facing an open plaza, which during that previous visit was struggling to reflect record-breaking heat. Not so this time.
We finally located the thermometer in the largest square, bordered on our left by the Radhus and ahead of us by Tivoli, our intended destination. Jackpot! I'd had a terrible time in Tivoli in high school, but I was willing to give it another chance (unlike, say, Paris, which the high school trip ruined for me). We got tickets and a map, and tried to decide which of its 38 restaurants to patronize, immediately discarding Hard Rock Cafe (desipite the fact that it was a ship-approved shop) in favor of a neat little cafeteria called Viften. After some confusion on how to order, we got some awesome smorresbrod and Carlsberg (the second Copenhagen requirement, after visiting the Little Mermaid), as well as some tremendous desserts.
After dinner, we broke down and bought ride passes so Greg could terrorize innocent Danish children on the bumper cars. Danish children are impossibly cute, across the board, but they pay for it later in life: we noticed an improbable number of really masculine women in Denmark. We also terrorized children in the fun house, but paid for that in aches and pains the next morning. After a Hans Christian Andersen "tunnel" and a number of basic carnival rides, Greg talked me into riding the Demon, but in exchange we had to ride the Star Flyer. I don't like up-and-down rides, and Greg doesn't like spinning rides (especially ones that are 80 meters high), so we were even. As a bonus, we were on the Star Flyer just as Tivoli's famous lights were coming on, so the views were doubly impressive.
And then...the Tower of Power concert started. The Copenhagen Jazz Festival is apparently run by people with a different definition of "jazz" than I have. We'd missed the George Clinton concert earlier in the festival, but by golly we were there for Tower of Power. We hung out at that for a while, then began the long walk back to the ship. I suppose if we'd known how to say the name of the port in Danish (or if we knew the name of the port at all, for that matter) we could've grabbed a cab, but there you go. We more or less retraced our steps, finding the Little Mermaid still surrounded by tourists, and getting back a little after midnight, as another couple left the ship for a night on the town, dressed to the nines. Maybe they were going to see Tower of Power.
There were two problems with getting back to the ship that late. First, our normal attendant was off duty, and the night porter wasn't entirely sure how to handle the insulin cooler. Second, our luggage was supposed to have been in the hallway for the porters no later than midnight. I frantically packed as well as I could, and our neighbors' bags were still by their doors when we set ours out.
Once we'd docked, our first destination was the Little Mermaid. Why? Because it's required. She was dwarfed by tourists, just like when I was in Copenhagen in high school, and Greg was as unimpressed as I had been in high school. Having checked that off the list, we continued into town. We passed a fountain I remembered from high school, then visited the Freiheit Museet. Although it was interesting and well-organized, we didn't really find it to be as effective as the Norwegian equivalent. As I expressed it at the time, "When we left the Norwegian Resistance Museum, I think I had a pretty good idea of where Norway stood during the war. I'm not getting that here." On the up side, it was free.
Even without an organized tour, we knew where the important stuff was when we stumbled upon a clot of people with Celebrity Cruises stickers. That's how we found the Amalienborg castle, and nearby, the Marble Church. We continued into the heart of town, passing the cafes of Nyhavn and through massive shopping districts closed to vehicles. I was looking for a particular landmark from my 1990 visit: a huge thermometer on the side of a building facing an open plaza, which during that previous visit was struggling to reflect record-breaking heat. Not so this time.
We finally located the thermometer in the largest square, bordered on our left by the Radhus and ahead of us by Tivoli, our intended destination. Jackpot! I'd had a terrible time in Tivoli in high school, but I was willing to give it another chance (unlike, say, Paris, which the high school trip ruined for me). We got tickets and a map, and tried to decide which of its 38 restaurants to patronize, immediately discarding Hard Rock Cafe (desipite the fact that it was a ship-approved shop) in favor of a neat little cafeteria called Viften. After some confusion on how to order, we got some awesome smorresbrod and Carlsberg (the second Copenhagen requirement, after visiting the Little Mermaid), as well as some tremendous desserts.
After dinner, we broke down and bought ride passes so Greg could terrorize innocent Danish children on the bumper cars. Danish children are impossibly cute, across the board, but they pay for it later in life: we noticed an improbable number of really masculine women in Denmark. We also terrorized children in the fun house, but paid for that in aches and pains the next morning. After a Hans Christian Andersen "tunnel" and a number of basic carnival rides, Greg talked me into riding the Demon, but in exchange we had to ride the Star Flyer. I don't like up-and-down rides, and Greg doesn't like spinning rides (especially ones that are 80 meters high), so we were even. As a bonus, we were on the Star Flyer just as Tivoli's famous lights were coming on, so the views were doubly impressive.
And then...the Tower of Power concert started. The Copenhagen Jazz Festival is apparently run by people with a different definition of "jazz" than I have. We'd missed the George Clinton concert earlier in the festival, but by golly we were there for Tower of Power. We hung out at that for a while, then began the long walk back to the ship. I suppose if we'd known how to say the name of the port in Danish (or if we knew the name of the port at all, for that matter) we could've grabbed a cab, but there you go. We more or less retraced our steps, finding the Little Mermaid still surrounded by tourists, and getting back a little after midnight, as another couple left the ship for a night on the town, dressed to the nines. Maybe they were going to see Tower of Power.
There were two problems with getting back to the ship that late. First, our normal attendant was off duty, and the night porter wasn't entirely sure how to handle the insulin cooler. Second, our luggage was supposed to have been in the hallway for the porters no later than midnight. I frantically packed as well as I could, and our neighbors' bags were still by their doors when we set ours out.
Labels: honeymoon
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