First Impressions

Note:  All of the photos in this edition, except for the title shot at the top, were taken with my phone, not my real camera.  The management regrets any inconvenience to the reader.

So.  After my big love affair with Stockholm, could my next port of call, Copenhagen, possibly compete?  This is what I was wondering as I lumbered off of the train.

Outside:  Iron gray skies and lots and lots of grim, drab, reddish brown brick.  And across the street?  The famous Tivoli Gardens, which I’d read about all my life, was not the glittering fantasy garden I’d always imagined.  It’s a hundred years old, and it feels much more like Coney Island than Epcot.

Okay, maybe I’m being a little hard on Tivoli.  But it wasn’t the glittering, shimmering fantasy land that I’d always imagined it would be.

Then there was this guy.  I realize we Americans dress like slobs, but really?  A tie at an amusement park?

Visually, Copenhagen, with its brown brick and flat, ancient fortress-town feel, simply cannot compete with fairy-tale, hilly, island-sprinkled Stockholm.  Frankly, very few cities could.

The park had the usual unlikely claims outside food shops:

Outside the park, Copenhagen wasn’t winning my heart yet, either.

Of course, they went there:

And why is there a statue of Danny Kaye in the middle of Copenhagen?

And all that dreary brown red brick.

So was this to be my lasting impression of Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen?  It turns out all it took was a little Segway tour to begin turning me around on the Danish capital…