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Posts tagged changing of the guard
Danish Changing of The Royal Guard in Copenhagen
Aug 2nd
Probably the highlight of Copenhagen for me, aside from the abundance of people riding bicycles was the Changing of The Royal Guard.
Being February in Copenhagen it was a freezing cold day (-3 degrees Celsius from memory), so it was a bit of a challenge recording the video and not shaking a little.
The Changing of The Royal Guard took place at Amalienborg. Depending on the circumstances at the time you will see a different change take place. We saw the ‘Løjtnantsvagt’, or The Lieutenant Watch. This is when HRH Prins Henrik is residing at the palace, or HRH the Crown Prince or HRH Prince Joachim are residing at Amalienborg in the capacity of regents.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the video. For those of you who missed the original post, take a read of Two Days in Copenhagen.
Two days in Copenhagen
Feb 17th
We arrived in Copenhagen at 8am in the morning after catching an overnight bus from Stockholm. It was a new experience for the both of us and I personally found it fairly comfortable.
It was Valentines Day, and when we arrived it was snowing lightly. Thankfully it was quite still compared to Stockholm and while the temperature was cold (-3 degrees Celsius) it was a lot more comfortable.
We had a hotel room for the night staying at a place called Hotel Alexandra. Travelling as a couple often presents itself with advantages – in this case we were able to find a last minute hotel room for cheaper than two beds in a hostel dorm. We booked it the day before and tried our luck with an 8.30am check in. Luckily the room was free. Hotel Alexandra is located right near the Tivoli and for walkers like us it couldn’t be in a better location.
The benefit of a hotel room is that you have a bathroom to wash clothes in and more space to dry them. Sure, you get privacy too, but at this point in the trip we were banking on doing a fair bit of washing! After washing the clothes and having a quick freshen up we went for a walk to see what we could find. Our first stop was the Botanical Gardens.
They are a bit different to those back in Australia and the one we saw in Singapore. Although flowering plants are few and far between, the snow brings it’s own beauty to the gardens. There was also an excellent greenhouse which was the perfect place for us to thaw out. From here we walked throughout Copenhagen aimlessly. We didn’t have a lot on our list of objectives here so it was nice to take it easy for a change.
Valentines Day ended with us finding an “eat all you can” pizza place called The Astor. Anyone who knows us would have a good idea of how much pizza we ate, and all for 59DKK! We went back to our room and watched some TV together ready to call it a day.
The day after we walked over to Amalienborg Palace to watch the Changing of The Danish Royal Guard. It has been pretty cool watching this in a few different countries now. I’d say Denmark has had the most impressive so far. After freezing in the cold for about an hour, the guards were changed and we were off on our way to Kastellet.
Nearby was a statue of The Little Mermaid, named after the story by Hans Christien Andersen. Interestingly enough, Copenhagen seemed like a fairytale place. The gardens and the snow, the lights at night, and the music! I swear they had Disney music playing when the trains arrived at the station.
On top of all of this it was even more of a fairytale for me; pretty much everyone in Copenhagen is a cyclist. The infrastructure is amazing, and according to the owner of a local bike store “the drivers have to watch out for bikes”, not the opposite that applies in Australia.
Short and sweet once again, just like Athens. While you could spend some time here exploring the day to day life, we both had a great two day visit.
Our Getaway in Stockholm
Feb 15th
We spent five nights and five days all up in Stockholm and it was a really different experience to our last few stops. We took it easy here, going out a bit each day but not really pushing ourselves to spend whole days walking around the city. I think the weather has contributed somewhat to this. Being from Adelaide in Australia we are just not used to such freezing cold temperatures. While the weather was bearable, it did make it less appealing to spend long periods of time outside as our faces would just get too cold!
We didn’t do as much site seeing in Stockholm either. On our second day here we visited Gamla Stan (Old Town) but that was really about it. Old Town is located on one of Stockholm’s islands and is made up of historic buildings, including the Royal Palace. It was here that we viewed the Changing of the Guard, which was pretty impressive. There was much more to see than the Athens equivalent as it goes for approximately 45 minutes and has a bugle, drum, marching soldiers and flags.
Our other days were spent wandering the shopping district along Drottningsgatan, relaxing at the hostels and, my favourite, snowboarding at Hammarbybacken!
We shared our time between two hostels while in Stockholm. The first was at City Hostel in Kungsholmen and the other was Skanstulls Vandrarhem in a trendy area called Södermalm. We both liked City Hostel a lot more despite Skanstulls Vandrarhem being in a bit better location. City Hostel felt more welcoming, more organised and was just more cosy. The fact that we didn’t have to share a dorm with a sleep apnoea sufferer who sounded like she was drowning in her sleep helped too!
Despite the cold, we really enjoyed our getaway in Stockholm. I know Jase was absolutely blown away by all the beautiful countryside we passed on the bus ride out of the city and I appreciated the different style of travel it brought to our adventure.
