Copenhagen Trip - Day Four

A late start this morning – we didn’t get out of the hotel until after 10:00 am – but we managed to cover a lot of ground nonetheless.

Our exploration today took us first to Copenhagen’s Central Station – a vast and magnificent building from 1911. Virtually all the long-haul, regional, and local trains pass through here and the place is alive day and night. There’s a small shopping center inside the main hall, and hotels ring the station for blocks around.

A big model railroad diorama inside the train station - how perfect! For 20 DKK you can run the trains around, too.

Our next train took us 35 minutes west to Roskilde (pronounced ROASH-keel, rhymes with “roast eel”), the ancient capital of Denmark. Narrow streets, cute houses, six-hundred-year-old graveyards, ethnic restaurants – plus the home of one of Europe’s biggest annual music festivals (happening in another few weeks), and also home to the Viking Ship Museum.

Inside the museum they’ve partially reconstructed various vessels that were recovered from the fjord outside. They’ve also built a new vessel using ancient plans, and sailed it all over the North Atlantic.

While the reconstructed ships are quite delicate, most of the museum is actually hands-on, and there are a couple replica boats in the main hall kids can romp around in.

Here's the replica longship the researchers built and sailed - the performance was better than anyone had expected. These guys were really tough to have this in the open ocean!

Wiped out, passed out on the train back home.

For dinner tonight: fresh Danish strawberries, mixed greens salad, multigrain toast, and chicken breast sauteed in creamy sweet Danish butter.

The train back to Copenhagen delivered us straight to our home base, and after cooking dinner we headed out again to Central Station and across the street to Tivoli – the famous amusement park. It’s not terribly large, but the location downtown can’t be beat, and there are dozens of restaurants, several live performance stages, thrill rides, and private halls for ticketed concerts. The mix of food, activities, and people-watching appeals to little kids, teenagers, and grown-ups equally. At night the entire place is lit up with thousands of electric bulbs on every tree, ride, and building.

We walked all over the grounds, and Wynn got to go on a couple kiddie rides. We left about 7 pm – the crowd was getting pretty thick as we headed out – it’s a nice Friday evening and Tivoli is the place to be to start the weekend.

In front of the Chinese Pavilion - they stage pantomime shows here. Wynn wants to go back tomorrow for more rides...