Little Mermaid

Weather is improving and we were told it would be 68 F with no rain for our visit to Copenhagen.  And it was.  We are back at 2PM and I am writing up my notes from our nice City of Copenhagen and Canal Tour.  Before we left I had used by phone app Trip Advisors to bone up on attractions and knew the Mermaid was .5 miles away and with 47 other people on a bus the mermaid was our first stop.

I do not know the story of the Little Mermaid and even though our guide spoke English I do not know that I have it right so you will need to research it.  The statute which you will see below will be 100 years old tomorrow and 100 female swimmers are going to jump in and formed a 100 year symbol….alas just a day early.  The artist used his wife as the model for the statute.  And I think I can get by saying that the Danish people are attractive all tall and many blond. 

After the statute we did a quick stop for the Queen’s winter palace she is off with Prince Henry at the Wine castle in France.  The Danish government pays for two castles but the family has two more the Wine Castle came with Henry.  The Queen is 72 but her son and grandchildren live in a large castle right close it has 4 chimneys while the Queen’s house has 5.  The Queen since 1972 is reported to be a chain smoker and beloved by the people, 600,000 of which live here.  The average Dane makes $41,000 a year but pays about 48% tax with 1 % going to the church which is Lutheran.
 

Our next activity was to load on to wide flat passenger boats for a can tour.  This delightful tour on this delightful day took an hour and we had a typical Danish female tour guide who spoke very excellent English.  Our bus tour guide was a former opera singer and was not quite as easy to understand. I will cover just a few things.  The history of Copenhagen is based on trade and sailing so the canals were built as a way for merchants to market what the sailors brought home.  For a while Denmark controlled what are now Sweden and Norway and also the Virgin Islands.  Today Greenland is Denmark which I frankly did not know. Maersk is a major name in international shipping the founder just died a couple of years ago at 94.  One of the nice developments in the harbor area is the new opera house which he built for the city and the Maersk headquarters “the blue eye” building is one of the newer ones but the metro or subway is being significantly upgraded with a number of new stations which is needed.  Cars require a 25% VAT and are expensive so significant numbers of people ride bicycles and the metro. 

The old part of the city dates from 1167 and much of it was destroyed by Wellington in 1807 because the Danes were trading with the French.  Our first cathedral on this cruise tour was Lutheran and was built in 1821 and is used by the royal family.  Another unique church has a three meter statute of Jesus standing on a gold ball (the world) and is called Church of our Savior.  Equally famous however, is the Carlsberg beer facility which has a tour of its own.

Lyle and Marlene went on a tour to Tivoli Gardens which we went by which contains a huge amusement park with a roller coaster “tower to hell” but is well known also for beautiful gardens.  Charlotte and I had an hour to shop but postcards were $3 and our favorite little cheap magnets were $8.  It was fun converting Krones to Euros to Dollars but nothing could get prices low enough to entice us to buy anything except a little mermaid magnet at the souvenir shop across the boat.  It will be the most expensive one on our refrigerator.