Still recovering from our 15,000 step day in Berlin, we lined up to take our Copenhagen on Foot tour at 9:30. Copenhagen is Denmark’s capital and is also the gateway to the rest of Scandinavia. Today’s weather was a perfect 10, a fact which made us and every tour guide, ship guide and all the tourists very happy as it rains quite often. There is a Danish joke that when asked "when is the summer in Denmark", the reply is "Tuesday". Well, metaphorically, this was Tuesday.

The city currently has about 600,000 residents. It was established over 850 years ago, and today is a thriving capital city that has beautiful waterways, modern and old architecture and like the rest of large Scandinavian cities, a clean green environment and thousands of bicyclists.

On our way to the old city, we kept seeing this building. It’s pretty unique. It’s an incinerator that converts trash to steam for energy. Then, the top is used as a very popular artificial ski slope.

We saw a bit of the Old Copenhagen and several memorials to previous Kings ( all named either Frederick or Wilhelm). Every building has the initials and number. Here is Frederick 3rd stamped on the entrance to the Citadel or Østervold, a fortress that was the closest thing Copenhagen had to a royal palace at the time. He was a much beloved king who defended the city well and created a monarchy in 1649 that lasted over 200 years.

There is a newer section that pays tribute to the fallen soldiers since WWII. This citadel is still used today for various government and other purposes including some secret ones.

We went through Churchillparken/ Churchill park.

Weaving through paths by a river brought us out to a nice upscale section of the city called Old King’s street.

We made our way to the Frederikskirke, the marble church. Frederick V loved to build and expanded the city, but tended to get carried away. This lovely church took many decades to build because he kept diverting money to other projects. It was finally finished in 1880.

The Amalienborg Palace, home to the Danish Royal family has several very large buildings around a huge square with a large statue of Frederick the Fifth. It is the centerpiece of a planned town he envisioned in 1750 named after himself— Frederikstaden.

The harbor beckons, meandering down paths that lead us out to the ships, houseboats, Royal Yacht, and past the headquarters of the large container company, Maersk who built the opera house and other large industrial complexes.

Of course, the most famous sight in "wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen" is the diminutive statue of the Little Mermaid. Crowds of tourists, including us, hovered around the area. I hummed the song with a fellow Viking passenger. Actually, it never even became famous UNTIL Danny Kaye sang the song and the city adopted it as a marketing symbol!

After a quick lunch onboard, we took the shuttle bus back into the center of town to just walk around. Stefanie and Bob walked a good way over to Tivoli Gardens, but we opted to investigate the largest Danish department store, buy some touristy t-shirts and take a quick pic of Nyhaven, the quaint, picture- postcard touristy area by the waterfront.

Back to the ship, just to turn around for our last jaunt of the day, a relaxing and wonderful jazz cruise through the canals. The four jazz players played a variety of instruments including a bass sax. They focused on the Dixieland music of the early 20th century with authentic and skilled performances.

The best part was being able to be part of the Friday night party atmosphere everywhere along the waterfront.

A delightful way to spend the evening! And we still had just enough energy left to see the comedian at the theater tonight. He was pretty good🤗🤗