Copenhagen and Tivoli Gardens (Fri., Aug. 11)

Today was a travel day for us. We left Oslo, which we really liked, for our one-hour flight to Copenhagen. The night before we left, we actually saw the sun briefly as it gave us a "golden hour" view of the Oslo suburbs from our hotel room. Oslo is supposed to be the second most expensive city in the world (behind Tokyo), but we didn't find it that bad. Yes, some items like beverages were ridiculous, but meals and transportation were fine and the food we had was excellent.

The trip to Copenhagen went well. The train to the airport was working again and so it was easier handling our luggage this time around. Of course, there was a lot of sitting around and waiting time, but it was fine. We took a short taxi ride from the Copenhagen (København) airport to our hotel, which is a little outside of the downtown part of Copenhagen. That is one of the trade-offs you make when booking with points, but the downtown area is very reachable by train, and we took one into town to visit Tivoli Gardens. One stop and only a six-minute ride.

Tivoli Gardens is one of the oldest amusement parks still in existence, opening in 1843. This is their 180th year, which you can see celebrated by the 180-sign hanging at the entrance gate (photo to the left).

The park is a mixture of rides and floral gardens and I tried to capture some of the beautiful gardens in the photo at the right. 

This was a Friday night in summer which the park celebrates with rock bands and fireworks. This means that crowds of young people started pouring in as it got closer to the time for the bands to come on and the rides section of the park was already super crowded. Since Danish rock isn't our thing and fireworks weren't until 10, we just ate dinner (Smørrebrød which is a Danish open face sandwich on rye), watched the lights come on and headed back to our hotel. I know, old people.