Third Day in Copenhagen

Our last day in Denmark was the shortest day yet. I still had a cold, so we got up late and checked out of the hotel (they kept our bags while we went into the city, thankfully) and headed into Copenhagen. We had to get a picture with these signs, right across the street from the train station.

I asked Carson to take a picture over the gate to Tivoli Gardens and he did. It looks exactly like the "It's a Small World" ride at Disney World. I really wish we'd have been able to visit this place!

This is the Church of Our Saviour. I think the staircase is really neat!

We went to Christiania, which is a community in the Christianshavn area of Copenhagen. It's a free community which I think means that it's not governed by the same laws. It's something of a hippie commune. You aren't allowed to take pictures inside but it was a really interesting place to see. This is the exterior.

Inside is a little difficult to describe. I mean, it feels like what I'd expect a hippie commune to feel like. It's got a gritty edge to it, everything looked like it needed a good power washing (the lack of leaves on trees this time of year makes everything seem even dirtier and worse than it really is).

And... well, there's pot being sold openly inside on a certain street. This seemed to be a big attraction for many of the people walking around. It was very strange - there were men with huge bags full of marijuana set up at tables scooping and weighing out the correct amounts for people very openly. It wasn't scary, but it felt very weird. And the smell was definitely all over the air. I really hoped we didn't smell like that all day, but I don't know. Pot is not legal in Copenhagen, and technically isn't legal here either, but it must be a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" mentality, because it was pretty open.

For me, the highlight of Christiania was this dog. He spotted Carson ordering shwarma and batted those sad eyes our way and of course we offered him a sample, so he followed us around quietly pleading for more. I have no idea who he belonged to, but he was very cute.

After we left there, we walked toward Christiansborg Palace. I really think this dragon tail spire is so interesting.

We decided to spend some time sitting at a cafe, so we settled in with treats at Andersen's Bakery - I had this chocolate mousse thing and it was delicious, and Carson had a cream-filled something. We sat here for awhile talking and enjoying the free wifi before we decided to head to the airport.

Once at the airport, we thought this was handy. They had a long table that extended down a hallway with places to set your bag and arrange it for security, complete with bags for liquids to make it easier. We didn't have to take our shoes off at security, and the lines were very short.

We got hot dogs for lunch at the airport and they didn't break us financially, which was nice. If we'd known, we might have eaten airport hot dogs every day we were in Copenhagen.

The Copenhagen airport is NICE and you can shop inside. There's an H&M, a LEGO store, and countless other stores inside, all after security. I read that it was named "Best Airport" several years running and I'd believe it. We wandered around for awhile and then saw passport control leading to the gates, so we went through, surprised that we were getting our passports stamped. It's not often that we get passport stamps in Europe because the borders are so open - this might be the thing I'm most sad about when it comes to travel here. Anyway, we got our stamps and then discovered that... we were in the wrong gate area (people who are not travelling to somewhere in the EU would get their passports stamped and then fly there), so we had to go to the people and tell them that we were morons and needed to get out of that area. So we each got two passport stamps there. Nice little trick for if you want passport stamps but don't mind looking like an absolute moron... I don't think this happens that often, judging by the reaction we received (thankfully they were different people the second time).

We landed back in Cologne right on time and we got to see the Rhine and the city from the sky as we flew in (the dark river is, oddly enough, the river Rhine).

I thought this prayer room in the airport was interesting.

He posed like that.

We got on a train and realized we could get off at the Cologne Hbf or we could just stay on until we got to Dusseldorf, so we settled in and changed trains there instead. We had about 20 minutes between trains and spotted this Pizza Hut express and saw the prices and were like "Let's do this!" because we both ate for less than what one of us ate for in Copenhagen. Also we love Pizza Hut. We ordered it just about every week in Tallahassee, which explains a lot.