Copenhagen, Denmark

We finally started to feel sore in Copenhagen. We have been doing A LOT of walking. We trekked all over Iceland and Stockholm...and in Copenhagen, we did the same thing. When we arrived, we threw our bags in lockers and headed out to walk the city. We went past Tivoli, down the main shopping street and into the parks. In the evening, we headed back to the train station and grabbed our bags and walked a good 20+ minutes to the place we stayed and then climbed four flights of stairs...with our bags...to the top. It was insane. We are beginning to get bruises on our hips, our backs are sore and I have blisters on my feet. Starting to regret the H&M shopping spree...

Copenhagen was awesome. We tryed out Couch Surfing for the first time and it worked out great! We stayed with this awesome couple, Steffan and Kika and they were so amazing and hospitable. They made us a yummy, typical Danish dinner our first night with them, gave us great advice on exploring the city, took us around Tivoli and to a local pub, and even bought Nathan a special birthday pastry to celebrate his big 3-0 the morning we left for Poland. It was a great experience, we'll definitely do it again!

Copenhagen is such an artsy city...we were struck with how amazing the architecture and design is there and were left drooling the whole time. One day we took a boat tour through all of the canals and got an up close look at some of the major architectural sites, then the next day we rented bikes and biked around the city center and Christianshavn Island to explore it for ourselves. We rode through the architecture school (that Danes get to attend for free) while Nathan wept openly (his words) and then rode around the old naval base which has now been converted into amazing, super expensive apartments and homes while I wept. We rode through Christiania, an area of Christianshavn Island where a bunch of hippies from the 70s set out to establish an idyllic commune where they could smoke weed freely and lay around with no responsibilities...it is now quite another thing. Drugs are still sold openly on the streets there but the place is anything but idyllic. Graffiti all over the walls, trash everywhere, stray dogs, old strung out hippies, people twiching and talking to themselves from their drug induced insanity, hoards of highschool kids, along with distinguished businessmen, looking to score some drugs; there is no creativity or innovation and, in fact, they have signs stating that they do not want any new growth or change and would prefer to "keep Christiania dumb". It is such a stark contrast to the rest of Copenhagen, but still definitely worth a visit. We spent our last evening walking around Tivoli, one of the original, old style amuzment parks. It was so pretty at night all lit up.

Done with Scandinavia...now on to Eastern Europe!