The joy of being a tourist

I am leaving the town to the invaders: increasingly numerous, mediocre, dirty, badly behaved, shameless tourists.

Brigitte Bardot

Today I went on a FREE walking tour and it was the best idea ever.  First of all it was free and second it was a great way to see the major sights and figure out what I want to got back to and actually tour.  

The building above is Copenhagen's Town Hall, Radhus.  In front of the town hall is a square and what better to have in Copenhagen's Town Hall square than a Native American band?

 

The picture on the left is a statue that is on the front of the town hall.  The statue is of Bishop Absalon.  Direct quote from the tour guide, "Notice anything different about this bishop? If you look closely you will see that he has a sword.  He was a bad-ass bishop"   The second photo is the entrance to Tivoli.  Tivoli is the second oldest amusement park in the world.    

 

The public mailboxes in Copenhagen are so cute!

This is the bad-ass bishop again, this time he has an ax.  Apparently there was a group of Pagan pirates who were terrorizing Copenhagen.  He went to their village and chopped the heads off of their 7 headed statue of their god.  When he wasn't hit by lightning on the spot the pirates decided his god must be much greater than their gods and so the surrendered without a fight.  

Hans Christen Andersen seems to have lived in about 200 places throughout Copenhagen.  This was one of those 200 places.

This photo was taken solely to show my lovely friend Suzy Rasmussen that I would think she was a lot cooler if she was of Danish descent.

 These two pictures are of a palace that were the true story from the movie "A Royal Affair" took place.

These photos are of Amalienborg Slot, the home of the royal family.  The palace is actually made up of 4 different buildings connected by underground tunnels.    

When the flag is flown that means that one of the royals is in residence.  

This particular building is the home of the Crown prince, his wife, and his four children.  I found it really interesting that the Prince's children attend a normal public school and that the Prince and Princess try to give their kids as normal a life as possible.  

Copenhagen Opera House

Nyhavn is actually pronounced Nehoun which is not what it looks like it would be at all.

This is the most photographed place in Copenhagen after the Little Mermaid.

These were trampoline like things in the middle of the park.  If there weren't little kids jumping on them I definitely would have tried one out.

After our tour we went to a floating beach and ate koldscal, which was like a soupy yogurt with cookie chunks in it.  The other two girls in the picture were two Aussies that we met on the tour.