Copenhagen Day 1
On our first day in Copenhagen we set off for a walk...
but unusually for us we had a specific destination.
We had decided to take the city sights ferry tour to see the main landmarks in the city.
With the temperature in the low single digits we opted to sit in one of the three outside front rows.
Forward facing of course.
Miss H lasted about 20 minutes before retreating inside the barely heated cabin.
The first stop was Nyhavn Harbour where we snapped pictures of the coloured houses.
Our guide allowed time for a short walk.
Still in Nyhavn Harbour we passed Copenhagen’s narrowest house.
I wondered if it was also Copenhagen’s most in need of paint.
We continued on past the Opera House with its disproportionately large roof.
Military enthusiasts can visit the Danish frigate HDMS Peder Skram.
It’s most famous for the 1982 incident in which a missile was fired into suburban Denmark.
The frigate was performing maneuvres in the gulf between Denmark and Sweden when the missile was accidentally fired.
It travelled 34 kilometres at low level, severing power lines before striking trees and exploding.
It caused a fire ball and shock wave that badly damaged 130 houses.
Amazingly, no one was injured.
Then came the most underwhelming part of the tour, but perhaps the funniest story.
The boat crossed to the other side of the harbour to show us The Little Mermaid statue.
Can you see it?
It’s that dot on top of the rock.
It certainly is Little.
But our guide told us we’re should consider ourselves lucky to see it.
For Expo 2010 in Shanghai it was removed and taken to China to be part of the Denmark exhibit.
But so tourists didn’t miss out, they set up a webcam in a Shanghai and a big screen where the statue normally is in Copenhagen.
But the brains trust who came up with this idea didn’t allow for the time difference.
So when tourists turned up in Copenhagen during the day to see the statue... in Shanghai, security staff were locking up and turning out the lights.
So for the six months of the expo, visitors to Copenhagen saw only a blank screen.