CHAPTER 16
Following our little brush with the hedonistic commune of hippies that is Christiania, we thought it prudent to visit the other end of the Danish social spectrum, and made our way to the marble facade of Amalienborg, Denmark’s Royal Palace- seat of the oldest monarchy in Europe.
The Queen must have been out of town or something, because there weren’t many people hanging around the palace, except for a few ornately decorated guards with big machine guns, who were less than thrilled by our attempts at including them in a group photo.
We walked out before we got kicked out, and moved on to a slightly more popular attraction- a centuries old bronze sculpture of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. Apparently, he lived most of his life in Copenhagen, including when he wrote the well-known fairy tale, and the Danes love him for it. Despite it being fairly small and unimpressive as far as public monuments go, there were dozens of people there, throwing elbows and boxing out, trying to get them and their progeny as close as possible for the best view of the bare breasted icon. We waited for a break in the sea of admiration, snapped our quick photo, and then hastily retreated before the subsequent wave overtook us.
The next morning was our last in the city, as we would be flying back to London that afternoon. Fittingly, it was grey and rainy, a perfect travel day in my book- now, don’t get me wrong, I wish every day was bright and sunny, but the occasional stint of sour weather is inevitable, and I would much rather spend it knocking off some miles to my next destination inside a train or airplane, than sitting trapped in my hotel room wishing it was pleasant outside.
We took this last Danish opportunity to visit one of Copenhagen’s oldest and most famous pastry shops, and ordered, can you guess? Danishes. Cap it off with one final bicycle ride through the city, a very Danish thing to do, and we were content to board our plane back to Britain: cross the English Channel, past the Albion Cliffs, over the hills of Kent, and on to London- our last stop on this month long adventure.
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