Denmark - Copenhagen

Day 5

Another early start, the weather was cloudy and humid.  As the boat pulled into Copenhagen you could see it was a huge industrial city, nothing lke Oslo.  We were off the ship for about 8am and began the long walk into the city centre. The capatin said it would be about a 20 minute walk,  this however was totally inaccurate as it took more like a hour.

Anyway, the first sight was the little mermaid.  A famous statue that is situated in Copenhagen harbour.   I am not quite sure what  I was expecting, however, it was a quite small but quite pretty never the less.  After fighting through the crowds of tourists I managed to take a photo, and then we were on our way.

The amount of cyclist in Copenhagen was unbelievable, there were literally hundreds of them.  Every road had a wide cycle lane, often much lager than the pavement for the pedestrians. The cycle lanes even had their own traffic lights.  The UK should have a long hard look at Copenhagen,  I can honestly say that if Preston had the same facilites I would be out on my bike more often.

 After a long  walk through the backstreets we arrived at the Vor Frelsers Kirke, a large church in a area known as Christianshavn.  After paying roughly £3 each to get in, we climbed 400 steps to the summit (encountering many rude foreign tourists on the way. Who just barge past, no sorry or excuse me).  Despite wanting to throw a couple of rude tourists off the top of the tower,  I was more interested in my own safety.  I do not have a head for heights, so I clung to the inner sides of the tower and took a couple of photos before getting out of there!

The next stop was freetown, the centre of Christianhavn. This is suppose to be a hippy commune, and has tried to separate itself from Copenhagen.  The area has tried promote itself as a more liberated zone especially were soft drugs are concerned.  All the walls in the small section are full of graffitti (art!) and there is rubbish everywhere and lots of signs saying  'no phot'. The reasons for the signs became quite clear,  loads of people were smoking cannibis, with cakes of the stuff on the tables for all to see.  Rather than a hippy retreat, it looked more like a hangout for Denmarks most wanted .  I can imagine, it is not the sort of place you would want to visit after dark.

After a carlsberg (the home of the beer. ps, it tasted much better over here than in the uk), we headed back to the ship.  In the evening we went and had a delicious italian, and then back to the cabin because we were exhausted.