Friday – Copenhagen, Denmark

Our first stop was just a short way from the ship’s berth; a small statue called ‘The Little Mermaid’. A tribute to the Hans Christian Anderson story of the same name the gorgeous little flippered-one sits upon a couple of small waterside rocks looking whinsomly inland in search of her lost, non-flippered love. For such a small, understated statue, I have to say that it generates an enormous amount of interest; all the excursion coaches stop off there, and there were crowds of people all gathered there to gaze upon her. I’m not hugely familiar with the story myself, but there is something rather endearing and subtley brilliant about the statue (see Tracey’s blog for a photo).

From here, we made our way across the Kastellet, which is a star-shaped fortification billed as one of the most significant forts in Northern Europe. For most of the day, the site is open to visitors, and free to enter, its raised outer ramparts clearly a haven for joggers, though why they’d want to be out running on such a manky day as today is anyone’s guess. Despite the rain (which was quite significant itself), we rather enjoyed our amble through the grounds. The site is still owned, and used by, the military; long brick-red buildings stretched in all directions, and the autumnal colours of the trees that punctuated the area were positively lovely. One positive aspect of the rain was an abundance of puddles, which I enjoyed very much (not splashing in them – photographing them…).

In one corner of the ‘star’, we discovered a windmill. In perfect condition, it, too, was open to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays… lucky for us it was a Friday, then! It was great looking around the inside of the windmill, and even nicer to shelter from the rain for a short while (by this time, we were both pretty drenched, and wishing that our sensible precaution of wearing fleeces and winter hats had extended to waterproof cagoules and an umbrella (which is sitting in the campervan back at Tilbury).

Leaving the Kastellet, we stopped off to gaze in awe at the Gefion Fountain, a magnificent statue of some ancient warrior in a chariot pulled by four bulls. The attention to detail was impressive, with a fine spray emitting from the bulls’ nostrils, looking like hot breath, and cascades of water shooting up from beneath the wheels of the chariot… a very clever fountain indeed!

From here, we walked down long streets adorned with ornate lampposts, towards our next destination; Nyhaven. Situated within the arty-farty corner of the city, Nyhaven is a broad canal populated by many tall, multi-rigged sailboats and tour-boats. Down one side of the waterway is a broad street housing loads of colourful bars and eateries, all with outdoor seating areas… obviously a very popular location with visitors. In the summer, I imagine it to be bustling with diners and drinkers; today, there were lots of visitors, and not an inconsiderable amount of diners, but I’m pretty sure many of them were sat there, under the large canopies, just to keep out of the rain. Either way, it was a great street to wallk down, and really captured the friendly, vibrant flavour of Copenhagen. For sure, we weren’t seeing the city at its best, with the weather such as it was, but our impression of the city was a good one nevertheless.

Our final destination of the afternoon before having to turn round and leg it back towards the ship, was Christiansborg Palace; a massive collection of regal-looking buildings an an impressive facade. The main focus of our attention was what they simply call ‘The Tower’; the central, tallest portion of the main building, where visitors are allowed to climb, via lifts, to a high viewing platform for extensive views of the surrounding city. This little adventure started with us tentatively joining a queue to get in (I say tentative because we weren’t a hundred percent certain that we’d joined the right queue for what we thought we wanted. We were reassured by a family of Americans in front of us who were experiencing the same quantary). Entry is free, but visitors and their belongings are scanned through airport-style security equipment. There are 2 lifts, the first of which carries a maximum of 8 people at a time, the second of which only carries 6, so queues inevitably formed. Between the two lifts, there is a restaurant which, by all accounts, is not only expensive, but also only accessible if you book about a week in advance to eat there. Once on the viewing platform, we gazed out across the city in four directions, took photos and then joined the queues to get back down to street-level again, as time was getting on and we had to be back at the ship for 5:30pm. While the views were extensive (and a little bit murky, to say the least), both of us remarked how they were far from massively spectacular, and that, all-in-all, it seemed rather like a lot of fuss over nothing much.

And that was our day in Copenhagen. Despite the rain, both Tracey and myself enjoyed our visit, and kind of wished that we’d had a little longer than just the half-day.

This evening’s show, playing to a packed Show Lounge, was an audience with Frank Williams, who played the vicar in Dad’s Army. It was an entertaining 45 minutes, with anecdotes and stories from the series, and featured a rather lovely home movie that had been shot by Frank himself during the Dads Army stage show… all very nostalgic!

Tomorrow, we arrive in Warnemunde, Germany.