Copenhagen, the Windy City September 4, 2006

We woke to squally weather this morning and since it was Monday most of Copenhagen’s museums are closed. We decided to go for a bus tour. This is something we haven’t done on this trip. This is your standard run of the mill Gray Line type tour that shows you the highlights of the city and more importantly keeps you dry while it’s doing it. This was followed by a canal boat tour that started in an open boat but transferred to a glass topped boat as it rained on and off all day.

The bus tour included the “Changing of the Guard” at the Royal Palace, a quick photo opp at the Little Mermaid Statue and a general tour of town with rapid fire down load from the recorded tour highlights that you get through the headphones. The thing that you come away with is that Christian IV built this city. Like Peter the Great in Russia he was a man with a vision and the where-with-all to make it happen. And, he did all of this while his treasury was being drained by the multiple conflicts that were taking place with Sweden. We were told that Christian IV started his reign as one of the richest monarchs on earth and ended it as one of the poorest, but the man built his country’s infrastructure and retained it’s sovereignty in the process.

The canal tour was interesting and gave a different physical perspective but was cut short because of a very high tide kept us from going under several low bridges (as in 6-7’ off the water. That was OK because with the strong winds we had to keep the boats windows closed even when it wasn’t raining.

After the tour Holly and I grabbed a quick lunch and walked around the center of town for a short while. We soon tired of fighting the wind which would literally push you backwards if you were not careful and returned to the hotel late in the afternoon. We’ll hope for better weather tomorrow as we plan on renting bikes and taking the grand museum tour tomorrow.