It's a cool, cool summer! (Part 8)

...and so we have come to the last day of our summer vacation abroad for this year! How did we spend it? It probably comes as no surprise that we started by visiting Copenhagen's most well known symbol, 'the Little Mermaid' statue. You can read the statue's adventures (quite a few vandalisms) here.


Then we visited two museums (although the bright sunny weather was calling for us to get out!), the Kunstindustrimuseet/The Museum of Decorative Arts and Amalienborg, the Christian VIII's Palace (the part that is open to the public), and watched the change of the guards in the Royal Palace.
You can see a photo of Maria with one of the guards (doesn't he look like the 'brave tin soldier' of the Hans Christian Andersen's story?)


Ah, we were very lucky to see a gathering of the European Royals in front of the Palace and they were kind enough to let us take a picture of them (...and if you believed that, we've got a bridge to sell you).


Next in our programme was the opposite of royalty: a visit to Freetown Christiania, a partially self-governed neighbourhood of about 850 residents in an island (Christianshavn) in the city. It wasn't (or shouldn't be) so much of a tourist attraction, we guess, but we were curious to see it. You can see a photo of Stathis by the exit with the inscription 'You are now entering the E(uropean) U(nion)' an obvious reference to the self-government status of the neighbourhood.


A tip: use the boat-bus to cross to the island of Christianshavn (by the way: this is an artificial island). It's much more fun than walking over a bridge.
Next was a stroll in the city including Nørrebro (we expected it to be more lively and it wasn't) and Nyhavn.


To finish our day and have dinner we chose a restaurant in Gråbrødre Torv, which we agreed is the most beautiful square in the city.


This led to several strange experiences! First, a couple of Cypriots were sitting next to us. This may not sound as much of a coincidence, but then they left and a Greek couple (unrelated to the couple that had left) took their place. And as you can imagine Copenhagen wasn't swarming with Greeks... Then, we had to wait A LOT for our main course. And when we asked the waitress why was that, we realized that our order had never been sent to the kitchen! An embarrassed waitress promised us that we would get our food in seven minutes - which of course was a promise that was not kept: our dinner arrived about twenty minutes -or more...- later! The upside was that the whole dinner (for two persons, including an appetizer and two desserts) was not charged as the restaurant felt (and correctly) that they had exceeded the limits of our patience...
...So that's it for 2007! Thank you for reading our stories and don't forget to send your comments! We are now sort of continuing our vacation in Athens (actually in a hotel in Vravrona for a few days) but also going to work every day.


Next stop Rhodes!