21.07.2011 – 21.07.2011  21 °C

A slow start to my second day in Copenhagen as I planned to go on a free walking tour throughout Copenhagen which didn’t start until 11am. The tour itself was interesting. The tour guide isn’t paid any money to take us on a tour and we have no obligation to pay him anything! I think in reality he probably ends up making a fortune because today there were at least 60 people doing his “free” tour and I would expect most people would have tipped him min $10.. when you think about that he is raking in the dough! Probably heaps more than a regular guide! I guess like all of those things though, there will be days when you make a packet and other days when you have only 2 people show up who choose not to tip you!

Anyway back to the tour… Tour began at city hall (beautiful early 1900s building that has a very domineering sky line!) and ended at the Danish Royal Palace. Unfortunately for most of the tour it rained! Our guide did a pretty good job of keeping up our spirits.. He is a pretty good story teller and kept us all going with stories about Copenhagen and its founding fathers. Copenhagen was first settled well over 6000 years ago but from a written history point of view nothing really happened until the dominance of the Vikings, from about 800 to 1200 AD. At this time Copenhagen as a city really came into its own as the Vikings controlled all of the shipping in and around Europe. Moving through the middle ages the Danes became more and more powerful as a country largely due to sea trade and the custom that this trade brought into the country.

Of course the tour took in some aspects of Hans Christian Anderson, where he was born, where he lived and what he wrote. I did not realise the amount of well-known stories he wrote.. I was surprised to hear that he wrote Snow White, Thumbelina.. most of those Disney movies are all his! And of course he wrote the Little Mermaid…. We didn’t get as far as the statue on today’s tour but I might have to venture out that far tomorrow to get my obligatory photo!

We also heard a bit about the impacts of the wars on Denmark;, that is to say not as much of an impact as Norway had! And the impact of fire on the city (the answer to every question on our tour was “And it burnt down”)! The city as we see it today was largely built in the mid 1700s after two horrific fires scoured the city.. I would love to know what it looked like 500 years ago!

Spent the afternoon walking around Rosenburg Palace. Rosenburg is a palace built in the 1600s that has been used as a museum for the past 200 years. It houses the crown jewels of Denmark and houses a large collection of paintings and regalia from previous kings and queens of Denmark. The palace itself is impressive from the outside but a little disappointing inside.. For one it isn’t set up very well as a museum.. There are no guided tours, audio guides or anything in either Danish or English so you sort of wander around and just look.. It also needs a bit of a spring clean and some decent lighting! The jewels themselves were as I expected.. Large, flashy and in some cases tacky.. but boy do I want a piece of it!!!  I would say that the Danish jewels are probably nicer than the Swedish and Russian but the Russian Armoury far outranks it in the case of sheer volume and presentation.. So far the Russian Armoury is still number 1.

By now it was getting on late into the afternoon and still pouring rain so I decided to have an early dinner (Chinese) and head back to the digs for some serious interneting to work out the next phases of my trip. Finished the evening chatting to a German lady and a French man in the dining room about everything but world peace!