My Scandinavian Adventure in Copenhagen- Day two

This post is about my Scandinavian Adventure in Copenhagen- day two. Read about the first day of my Scandinavian adventure here.

Walking Tour in Copenhagen

Helpful travel hint- when visiting a foreign city, especially a city where you didn’t do much research ahead of time, take advantage of a free walking tour!  You get to learn all about the city you’re in with great tidbits of history. And, it’s a great starting point to help you decide what you want to explore further. You can usually ask your guide for some helpful hints about where to eat or what to see. I usually start my first day in any new city with a walking tour.

The tour we chose, the Copenhagen free walking tour starts at 10am, 11am and 3pm. The meeting point was the City Hall steps, very close to the central station where we started the day before (with the bus/directions semi-fiasco). The city hall is located at the square Rådhuspladsen.  This square is the southwest end of the pedestrian street we walked along the day before. We made a mental note to get back to explore it later- see how helpful the walking tour already was!

Touring Copenhagen and learning some history

The current city hall was inaugurated in 1905 after the two previous buildings burnt down.  Our tour guide explained to us that there were a lot of fires in old Copenhagen that destroyed many of the old buildings.  In fact, our tour guide Jarod told us a really cool fact. You can tell the older buildings from the newer ones by looking at the edges of the buildings located on the corner of the street. If they are rounded they are newer, designed that way so that the fire hoses could get quickly get around them without the water supply line being cut off.

Back to the square where we started our tour. On all sides were tall, beautiful brick buildings- most of which I couldn’t tell you what they are. You’ll instead just have to look at them and enjoy. 

From the square you can also see part of the Tivoli Gardens, which we would be visiting later.

More sights about Copenhagen

We started on our walking tour, passing lots of beautiful buildings and charming streets. . 

Christiansborg Palace

Our next stop is a palace and a government building. Christiansborg Palace is where the Danish Parliament and Supreme Court meet. It also houses the office of the Prime Minister.  It is the only place in the world that houses all of the branches of government- executive, legislative and judicial- in the same building. The building is also used for the monarchy- including the royal stables and chapel. This is the site of the first royal residence in 1167, but because of fires it is no longer there. There were royal guards standing outside, but we walked through the courtyard to the other side of the building without going through any security.

In the center is an equestrian statue of Christian IX, the king of Denmark from 1863-1906. This sculpture, which was unveiled in 1927, was created by Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen. This might not mean anything to you, but it was the first equestrian statue of a monarch ever created by a woman.

Amalienborg Palace

Our walk continued, leading us to the Amalienborg palace, the home of the Danish royal family.  From the courtyard there are four identical buildings. Again, the courtyard was open to all people to walk through, but royal guard are in front of all four buildings. Frederik church, known as the Marble Church, can be seen from one of the axes.  In the center is another equestrian statue of the founder of the royal palace, King Frederick V. Amalienborg wasn’t always home to the royal family, but to four families of nobility. However, when the original Christiansborg Palace burnt down the royal family bought it and moved in 1794. 

That was the end of our walking tour, we walked towards the waters edge for a group photo. Then our walking tour guide, Jarod, gave us some helpful hints about where to eat. He also told us about some other walking tours that were offered later in the day.  I very much recommend this walking tour to anyone who goes to Copenhagen. A walking tour is always a great way to orientate yourself for the day. And it also gave us some ideas of what else we wanted to explore further.

Frederik Church

We walked back to the Amalienborg Palace to check out the Frederik Church. This Lutheran church boasts the largest dome in all of Scandinavia. King Frederick V set the foundation stone in 1749. But, because of budget problems the church was never completed and stood in ruin for over 150 years. Finally, the church was opened in 1894. 

Kongens Have

After the church we wanted to find lunch.  We got some sandwiches to go and walked to Kongens Have, The King’s Garden.  This is the most-visited park in Copenhagen, and also the oldest. The Rosenborg Castle is located in this park also. The park started as the private gardens of the King and dates back to 1606. The park was lovely, and reminded me a lot of gardens in Paris. I found out later that they were indeed modeled after the Tuilerie Gardens in Paris!  We had a nice picnic right here overlooking this fountain. 

Rosenborg Castle

Rosenborg Castle was designed to be the country summerhouse for the royal family when it was built in 1606. It was only used as a royal residence until 1710 and since then it has been used only twice, once being after the Christiansborg Palace fire.   

We explored the grounds, what a beautiful building, and a fabulous park to go with it.

The greatest Danish toy ever invented

We returned to the Strøget the world’s longest and oldest pedestrian street, established in 1962 it is 3.2 kilometers long. On this street we saw a Lego store. Did you know that Lego’s are Danish?   A carpenter from Denmark, Ole Kirk Christansen, made wooden toys in 1932, and the term Lego comes from the Danish phrase leg godt which means “play well”. The wooden toys were replaced with plastic blocks in 1947  And the Lego store in Copenhagen is the flagship store so we had to visit. 

Second walking tour of the day

After getting some souvenir shopping in, we went on our second free walking tour, this one of Christianshavn, a part of Copenhagen located on one of its artificial island which were established originally as a fortification of the city. This part of town has a lot of the canals and boats that we saw from our boat tour the day before. 

On this walking tour, one of the first things that our tour guide Jarod (yes- same tour guide as earlier in the day) pointed out to us was the sculpture in the canal called Agnete and the Merman. Made in 1992 by the Danish sculptor Suste Bonnen, they show a merman and his seven children begging Agnete back home.  Agnete was a human woman who fell in love with a merman but she wanted to go back to land to visit her family and never returned to the sea, so there her family waits for her.  Jarod told us that in winter when the canal freezes sometimes you can see the arms sticking out of the frozen ice. 

Another site on the tour was Børsen, a 17th-century stock-exchange across from Christiansborg Palace. It hasn’t been used as the stock exchange since 1974, but I loved the building, especially the spire with four crocodiles tails twined together.  Does it look like a crocodile to you?

Next site was the Church of Our Savior, with it’s winding spire.  You can walk to the top of the spire for a small fee, and we were planning to do it but it was a bit rainy and windy so we decided to opt out of it, especially when we found out you can go to the top of the tower in Christiansborg Palace for free! 

Freetown Christiania

Our walking tour led us Freetown Christiania, where we bid our tour guide our final goodbye. Christiania is a self-proclaimed autonomous neighborhood of about 850 residents. This neighborhood is considered a social experiment, located where there used to be military barracks. After that, some homeless people moved in, and then the squatter hippie lifestyle took over. It is probably most known for being the park of Copenhagen where you can buy marijuana, though you aren’t supposed to take it outside of this neighborhood.  Marijuana is still illegal in Denmark, but is “tolerated” in this area. Thus our tour guide didn’t take us in, just showed us the entrance, and we went in our own, just missing a police raid. Though about 15 minutes after the police left, the dealers were out again.  

You’re not supposed to take pictures in that area, but we did wander around taking in all the sights (don’t worry, no drugs were bought or used by us). It is a very interesting area, it kind of felt like a run-down abandoned amusement park. Here they also produce the Christiania bike, a type of tricycle that we’d seen all over the streets of Copenhagen.

The tour of Christiansborg Palace

After our walk around Freetown Christiania we walked around with a couple of the guys who we met on the tour and that were visiting Copenhagen as well.  We decided to go to the top of the Christiansborg Palace for a view from the top of the tower, which is free to visit.  It was not the greatest weather anymore, but still great the see the city from a greater height. The guys were nice too, though I don’t remember who they are anymore.

Tivoli Gardens

We stopped for dinner, and then our last stop on our way home was a trip into Tivoli Gardens. Tivoli Garden is the world’s second oldest amusement park. It opened in 1843, and it’s located right in the center of Copenhagen.  There they have concerts, or you can take a ride on a roller coaster or other ride. There are plenty of restaurants, and it’s also just beautiful to walk around and take in.  

It was the evening and rainy when we arrived, and you have to pay just to enter and walk around (rides cost extra). But, luckily, as we were standing outside reading the sign about the cost, a nice man walked by and offered to let us in with his entrance card.  In exchange, he said, we just had to make sure we enjoyed and had a nice time. And that we did! It’s the fourth most visited amusement park in the world and it’s easy to see why. If we had more time in Copenhagen, I would have definitely wanted to explore it more. 

And that was day two of my Scandinavian adventure in Copenhagen.  What a beautiful city, but the next day it was time for us to leave and continue our journey around Scandinavia.  If you want to read more blog posts about my time in Scandinavia, check out this post, about hiking Pulpit Rock and some of the numerous waterfalls in Norway.