Gruenhundstrasse

"Hop!" means "Jump!" in Danish.

The first thing you are wondering: What is this building with numbers on the side?

Well, I'll tell you, these are the coordinates for the Longitude of the southern-most point in Scandinavia.

It happens to be in Denmark, near a city called Gedser.

The reason we went there is that we took a ferry from Germany. We drove our car right onto the ferry, and an hour and a half later, we were in Denmark!

A short drive later, we reached Copenhagen, or København, as the Danes call it. Welcome to Copehagen! Here is the Town Hall.

Copenhagen is the home of the longest pedestrian shopping street in Europe....and they have a 7-Eleven. Woo hoo! Too bad Slurpees cost like $7.00. Not only is it the longest shopping street in Europe, but it's probably the most expensive, too! Denmark is not cheap.

So Denmark is the birthplace of Lego.

Kieran marked the occasion appropriately.

After some "window" shopping (we were trying not to spend our Danish Krona...)

We wandered down to Nyhavn, which is the historic harbor area.

All the wooden houses are painted bright colors.

The whole harbor is filled up with old funky ships.

It was fun to walk past and look at all of them.

It was better than walking along the other side of the harbor, which was so crowded with pedestrians and cafes that you could hardly walk!

As we continued on our walk, we came to the Amelienborg Palace, or the Royal Mansions.

They had palace guards, kind of like in London.

On one side of the square is a pretty dome church called the Marble Church.

And right across the way, is the Opera House. It is on it's own little island, and is super funky modern architecture.

FOUNTAIN!

Speaking of super funky modern architecture, there was lots of it in Copenhagen.

Random buildings...

Super funky...

Royal Mail...

Flower pots on a window...

Sunset at the Kastellet, or old fortifications of the city.

Here you find the Gefjon Fountain. Time for another great legend!

So a long time ago, the Swedish King Gylfi promised the Norse Goddess, Gefjon, that he would give her as much land as she could plow in one night. So, being the resourceful Norse Goddess as she was, Gefjon turned her sons into oxen and plowed a huge chunk of land. Not to go back on the deal, the Swedish king threw the land out of Sweden, and into the ocean, and it became Zealand, which is the island where Copenhagen lies. (The hole left in Sweden is now apparently Lake Vänern, the largest lake in Sweden.) Scientists have this weird theory about plate tectonics and continental drift and all this crazy stuff, but clearly any story about people named Gylfi and Gefjon has got to be true. Cuz you just can't make up names like that.

Here is a statue of another great story you may all know....."The Little Mermaid."

One thing you'll quickly learn if you ever go to Denmark is that Hans Christian Anderson, the famous fairy-tale author of the Little Mermaid and other stories, is from Denmark. He's probably the most famous person from Denmark EVER. (Come on....I dare you to name one other person that you have ever heard of who is from Denmark...)

What you may not know about the Little Mermaid is that in the original version, Ariel does not have a best friend named Flounder, nor a seagull pal named Scuttle. Oh, and also, Prince Eric marries some other chick in the end, and Ariel, rather than killing him with a special knife from the sea witch so that she can be a normal mermaid again, decides to fade into the ocean and become sea foam.

Speaking of Hans Christian Anderson, here's a statue of him facing Tivoli Gardens. Tivoli is the oldest planned amusement park in the world. It opened in 1843, and still has the oldest operating rollercoaster, called the Rutschebanen from 1915. We rode on it, and it was pretty fun. There was actually a park worker who sat in the middle with a manual hand-brake.

Tivoli had lots of pretty garden areas, too, and lots of different themed buildings that looked like lots of places in the world. I think that is how Disney got his idea for the country sections in Epcot Center.

Within half an hour of opening, we had ridden on the four biggest thrill rides in the park...

Twice!...Well, except for this crazy flying airplane thing that went to 4Gs. After we got off that ride, we were useless for about an hour while our inner ear canals came back to earth.

Here's outside a mini Taj Mahal building...

And the "Ski Chalet" of the Rutschebanen. I think this was also inspiration for the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland.

FOUNTAIN!

Here is where we ate the most expensive hot dogs in our life. But yeah....Tivoli. Fun!

On a totally different note, we'll move to the second most famous person ever to come out of Denmark. Who you probably haven't even heard of anyway, but...we visited the Church of Our Lady, where a very famous collection of sculptures by Danish artist, Bertel Thorvaldsen, are on display.

This Cristus Statue is one of the most famous in the world. Replicas of this statue are at many of the Temple Visitors' Centers for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Along the sides of the church are statues representing each of the Twelve Apostles.

While we were in Copenhagen we stayed at the Marriott, which was on a long harbor. The harbor had a wooden pier along it with built-in swimming areas.