Exploring Copenhagen: A week of adventures

The highlights of this last week have definitely been my various explorations of the city. Copenhagen is great because everything is so close together, so it's really easy to get around by foot, bike, or bus, which is how I spent this last week exploring the city.

My first exploration adventure was on foot to some places in the proximity of DIS. First we walked over and watched the changing of the guard at the Royal Palace, which was pretty neat even though it was pretty crowded. Then we walked over to the really gorgeous church that sits right next to the Royal Palace. Not being a particularly religious person, I've never really been that interested in looking at a lot of churches, but Denmark has some REALLY beautiful churches that even I can appreciate for their artistic value. Finally, we ended at a park filled with these strange giant plastic bubbles that I had been extremely curious since we rode past them on the way back from the airport. The bubbles were... bizarre. I think my brother summed them up best in his comment on my facebook photo of them: "I always new the Danes were light years ahead of us in supermarket bubble machine toy dispenser technology, I just did not realize they were THAT far ahead of us." In this park I also had my first hot dog in Denmark, and let me tell you, they are much more delicious than American hot dogs. They are pretty cheap for food in Denmark (only about $5!) and are covered in all sorts of delicious mustard and onion chips and other mystery sauces! If you are ever in Denmark and are in want of a quick cheap meal, I insist that you try a hot dog from a polse stand!

Soldiers lining up for the Changing of the Guard

Giant Plastic Bubbles

Inside the church near the Royal Palace

My next adventure through Copenhagen came a couple of days later, this time on bicycle. I joined up with a girl, Kate, from a nearby host family and we set out to explore Østerbro, the district of Copenhagen that we live in. We didn't have much of a plan. We knew we wanted to find the Little Mermaid statue, because even though everyone says that it's really small and not that big of a deal, we still figured we should see it, but beyond that we had no real idea where we were going. But we definitely had a blast! Before finding the Little Mermaid we found this really sweet park, which I think used to be a military fort. Anyway, it was really pretty to walk around and had an awesome giant old-fashioned windmill. Then of course, we found the Little Mermaid. It is a nice statue, out on the water but to be honest, I'm not sure why so many tourists flock to it. After leaving the mermaid, Kate and I biked down to the King's Garden and walked around the outside of the castle there. We wanted to go in but it closed in a half hour so we figured we'll spend the money to go in when we'll have a little more time.

Entryway to the old military fort

The streets of the fort

The windmill and me

The Little Mermaid

My final adventure of note this week was when a friend and I made our way down to Christiania. I have plenty to say about Christiania, but I'm actually going again this Wednesday on a field trip, so I think I'll wait til then because I don't want to be repetitive with my blog.

That's all for now!