Statue of Hans Christian Anderson
We only had this one day to tour around Copenhagen, so we did as much as we could on a self-guided walking tour of the downtown area.
We started by walking by Tivoli Gardens, the amusement park, and the Carlsberg Glyptotek. After passing the statue of Hans Christian Andersen weW walked along the Stroget stoppng in at a couple of old churches.
Vor Frue Kirche
There are a lot of very large cathedral-like churches in the central part of Copenhagen. The first was Vor Frue Kirche, then we stopped at Sankt Peders church, and then Holy Spirit church.
Nyhavn
We next walked along the canal at Nyhavn, a lot of which is under construction. From here we went to Amalienborg Palace. We stopped at the gardens, but decided we should go in to see the grounds. They are very large surrounding a large open central square. To the west side is another huge domed church, Frederiks Kirke. Not so old as some we saw today, built around the end of the 19th century, but it has a beautiful dome and spectacular interior. I guess that is to be expected from a church built just off the royal palace.
Dome of Fredericks Kirke
Fountain in Amalienborg Gardens
We ate our lunch in the garden. By this time most of the tour groups seemed to have moved on, so it was very peaceful. Since we only had a couple more hours until we had to be on the tour boat, we walked quickly back to our hotel and took our luggage out of storage.
We got conflicting messages from the hotel clerk last night (he was right) and this afternoon about where to catch number 26 bus to Frihavn, the cruise ship port. We couldn’t really see any sign of a bus stop where we were told to look for it though, so we walked in to the tourist information building across the street. There the clerk very gruffly told me where the bus would stop.
We waited and when the first number 26 bus came the driver told me that it was not the right bus. We needed to wait for the next one. We did that, but unfortunately this driver seemed to speak no English. We did get the word “ship” from him, so thought we were on the right bus. At first the bus was going in the opposite direction to what we wanted (I could tell this from the GPS), but he soon made a U-turn in the middle of the street. A few stops later two other English speaking people got on, and they also asked if the bus was going to the cruise terminal. I spoke to them, and they said that it was the correct bus, and that we would just ride it to the end of the line.
A bit later another couple got on, and they too were from the boat. Both they and the other couple had been on the boat around Norway, and so they knew where the stop was. It was a good thing they were on the bus, as I do not know how we would have known where the bus would stop otherwise.
After going through the check-in process, which went very quickly and smoothly, we got in to our cabin. It is a very nice room, right at the bow of the ship with a large window overlooking the ocean, and no obstructions at all. We spent the rest of the afternoon finding our way around the ship, going to muster drill, and made reservations for supper for the rest of the week.