Copenhagen Journal Notes

[celem]

In another post, message board participant “Princess Di” requested my journal entry about Copenhagen. It is below. Note that by the time we had reached Copenhagen we were pretty saturated with shopping, “Old Town” walking tours, Cathedrals, etc. So we immediately left Copenhagen by train to tour the highly recommended Viking museum in Roskilde, Denmark. The next day, we made another diversion, by bus, to visit the Carlsburg brewery. We were not disappointed with the change of pace. Regarding my downbeat comments about Tivoli that contrasts with glowing remarks from some other posters, I can only say that different people have different interests and, thus, Tivoli, as with most things in life, is a rather subjective matter.

 

Portion of Journal from July, 2005 Celebrity Constellation Baltic Cruise:

July 13, 2004, Copenhagen, Denmark

$1 = 6.107 DKK

- We were scheduled to arrive at 9:30AM but during breakfast, at 9AM, the loudspeaker announced that due to technical difficulties with the propulsion systems (now repaired), our arrival would be delayed until 11AM. To compensate the ship will depart later on the next day, at 4PM instead of 2PM. I suspect that the problem occurred around 3AM last night as the ship was vibrating so much at that time that the rattling water carafe woke us up. We talked about it at breakfast with Quintos, our first waiter, and he says that it is still broken and they are probably flying some French engineers to fix the thruster.

 

- Around 11:30 we caught the ship's free shuttle to "Kongens Nytorv", which is the Northern tip of the pedestrian shopping streets, collectively referred to as Strøget. WE walked down into the subway station at "Kongens Nytorv" to see if we could take it to the central train station, but discovered that the Copenhagen subway is in its infancy and there is only a short route constructed.

- From "Kongens Nytorv" we walked to the Train Station "Hovedbanegården", which is behind Tivoli. We purchased round-trip tickets for Roskilde, which is about 30km West of Copenhagen. Our goal was Vikingeskibsmuseet, the Viking Ship museum. Rick Steves rated this as a three star tour, even higher than the Viking Ship museum in Oslo, which was a two star. It was very interesting with everything printed in multiple languages including English. I never realized how tightly Ireland was integrated with Viking Denmark, but this museum made the point. Several of the five ships in the museum were built in Ireland. The museum is also building a reproduction of the long ship and will launch it in September and in 2007 will "reconcour Ireland".They also had people in period dress at work with period tools making barrels, arrows, etc., much like at Williamsburg, VA.

- We ended up walking back to the train station as the #307 bus was going to be over 20 minutes in arriving. We passed the beautiful old Roskilde church but it had just closed for the day.

- After arriving at Copenhagen Central train Station at 6:30PM, we immediately went to eat dinner at a restaurant near the station and Tivoli that was recommended by Rick Steves, the Bryggeriet Apollo, which is also a micro-brewery. My wife had rump of lamb (Lammeculotte) and I had Plaice, a flat "Danish Plaice" fish (Ovnbagt rødspætte) that tastes more like lobster than fish. Wonderful! The food was the most enjoyable that we have had on the entire cruise. Not fancy, just good.

- After dinner, My wife wanted to go to Tivoli because she said that she couldn't come to Copenhagen and leave without having been to the famous Tivoli. I didn't really want to go since Tivoli is basically an amusement park, rather like a Six Flags with some band music and more flowers, but smaller. Its primary claim to fame is its location - within a major city center, and its longevity, dating back to 1843. It was as I expected - basically an amusement park with extra music and flowers. Even if we had wanted to ride one of the roller coasters, the wait in line would have been at least an hour. It is very popular with some people and Rick Steves rates it very high, but then he tends to highly rate most “kid friendly” destinations. Oh well, tastes differ, but in my opinion, it was a waste of $10 each.

- After Leaving Tivoli, we were so tired that we took a cab back to the ship for 77Kr ($12.61).

- My wife wanted to go to the stores at the dock to find a flag pin. Afterwards we walked to the back of the ship to take a photo and noticed a "Free Bike" stand, so we inserted the returnable coin and took turns riding it. This was the only place that we have found the bikes - all other racks were empty.

- Inside our room at 10PM - very tired!!

 

July 14, 2004, Copenhagen, Denmark

- Sleepy today. Had room service coffee at 7:30AM and breakfast yet to do. We got a got a late start today.

- We took shuttle & then walked to City Hall. While enroute we found Rick Steve's favorite bakery (Kransekagehuset) for a couple of danish - very good by the ones that we had in Germany were better. We toured City Hall but didn't find much of interest besides the WC. We then caught the #26 bus to the Carlsberg brewery. The tour was interesting, although you don't see the actual brewery, just exhibits. However, you do get two large sample beers. My wife's favorite was Carl's Special. Our second beer was a wheat beer (Hvede - pronounced veed-la.). We sat and talked with a Danish couple (Bjarne & Anamarie) over our beers beers. They were from Aakborg in Northern Denmark, home to Aalborg Akvavit, Denmark's most famous aquavit. They were very pleasant and we had a nice conversation.

- We took the #26 back , getting off early, to the City Hall area, even though the #26 went all of the wayto the ship. We had a quickie lunch of ristet polse "all the way". My wife wanted to go to the sweater store, among others.

- we caught the 3PM shuttle back to the ship.

- Went to the "Reflections" lounge to watch the sail out. Then, we went to Dick Morris' talk on "who will win the presidential election". He predicts Bush.

- After napping a little in Dick Morris' talk, we remained so very tired that we went to some lounge chairs on deck 4 to read; and also slept for a half hour.

- We had one dance while waiting for the restaurant to open. Tonight was "informal" and we had, in the main dining room, the same beef dish that was served in the Ocean Liners specialty restaurant. The Ocean Liners' version was definitely of better quality although this was good.

[Princess Di]

You do have excellent Journaling. I appreciate your views and descriptions. :D

Thanks for all your Posts. :cool: