Sunday, April 18

From Dick:

I just got back from the train station where I went to make reservations for Tuesday's return to Germany.  I waited 45 minutes in line, where the announcements were made that if anyone is going to Hamburg, there were no seats available until Wednesday at the earliest!  I resolved that we would no doubt be spending another day in Copenhagen.  I finally got to the window and told the ticket agent that we had Eurail passes and wanted to make reservations as soon as we could out of Copenhagen for Braunschweig, Germany, and he apologized and said the earliest available first class reservation was for 11:45 a.m. on Tuesday!  Needless to say, I paid the 9+ euros and made the reservations, and got boarding passes for a car and two window seats!!  I can't believe it!

From Bev:

Meanwhile, as Dick was getting train reservations, my mission was to do laundry at a laundromat. Remembering the days before we owned a washer and dryer and trips to the laundromat were a weekly outing, I was not real excited about this. Naturally, Danish laundries are different from ours, but once again a friendly local came to my rescue and in no time at all, I was headed back to our hote. Yea-- clean clothes!!!

Having taken care of business, we set out to do more touring. The famous statue of the Little Mermaid is currently visiting Japan, but there was a big Japanese festival going on in the park where she is usually located. Then we toured the Danish Resistance Museum and went to the Carlsburg Glyptotek (which I think means “museum of scultures”). The Glyptotek highlight for us was the mummies and decorated coffins and vaults dating back to around 2500 B.C. I don't care who you are, that's old! We were definitely wishing we had more time there!

We came across a Chinese restaurant and the prices seemed cheaper than a lot of menus we had been seeing, so we went in and had a wonderful meal and felt pretty good about the price until we went back and figured out the conversion and realized that our little dinner had cost us around $90! Even Chinese is not inexpensive in Denmark!

After dinner, we went to Copenhagen's famous amusement park, Tivoli. Laurie had recommended that we visit at night because everything is all lit up. Supposedly, Tivoli was the inspiration for Disney Land. It was quite chilly, but Dick and I and the Japanese tourists were there! We were impressed with the beauty of Tivoli at night, and got in on the light show right before the park closed for the night. It was a worthwhile stop, and is no doubt really beautiful in the summer when all the flowers are in bloom.

Then it was back to the hotel to get to bed. Dick has an early morning breakfast meeting with Ambassador Fulton and a group of about 10 Danish attorneys to discuss differences between the Danish and American legal systems. That should be interesting!