Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Copenhagen - Top 5 Places


My brother is going to visit Copenhagen in this weekend and asked me which sights/places he can cover in 2/3 days. I have been there for much longer period and visited 7 out of the Top 10 places mentioned in the official website. I have not seen Tivoli (an amusement park), because I don’t like tough and exiting rides and never managed to see some museums in Copenhagen.

I really dont agree with the rating of these sites, like Little Mermaid (picture1) (picture2) which is the much hyped statue in miniature, with very little historical significance but heavily publicized tourist attraction. The official site describe it as “Hans Christian Andersen wrote a fairy tale about her, Disney produced the movie, and Copenhagen maintains a statue in her honour.” The interesting fact about this one is the head of the statue is replaced every year with a new one.
I have seen the The Viking Ship Museum (Genuine viking ships on display at the museum in Roskilde.), which was very ordinary one.

10 places can not be covered in a single weekend, so I have to make top 5 for him. I mean the list can vary with the choice of tourist, but if I had been given option to see five places I could have seen these one.

Kronborg Castle

1) Kronborg Castle, Helsingor(Denmark) – Helsingborg(Sweden) – Malmo(Sweden) – Copenhagen(Denmark) round trip. This is a must seen trip, if one is visiting Copenhagen. The Helsingor castle is very famous as “William Shakespeare's play Hamlet takes place at Kronborg Castle in Helsingør.” From Helsingor one can reach Helsingborg in 20 mins by boats. Helsinborg is a very old city with castle and ageold history. Malmo a small industrial town of Sweden, adjacent to Copenhagen seperated by Oresund Bridge. My visit to Malmo and Oresund Bridge was really wonderful.

Canal Tour

2)Canel cruise in small canals of Copenhagen: The fascinating view of different locations like old churches, Vesterport(old port), Opera house, little mermaid, royal ship etc can be seen in a 60 minute guided tour. This canal drive is really enjoying and highly recommended. One can see a large section of the city through this drive.

3)Town Hall - Walking street –Børsen (former Stock Exchange building) - Danish Parliament: Copenhagen's largest shopping area is the Europe's longest pedestrian shopping street, Strøget. There is an Erotica Museum also, unique of its kind. The walking street is quite crowded, and always full of activities, specially near the Town Hall. There is a booklet called “Copenhagen this week”, which contains all details of these activities.

4)Amalienborg Palace : This is the home of the Danish royal family , always patrolled by royal guard, the change of guard is something special for the tourists. A domed Marble Church can be seen behind the Royal Palace.

Frederiksberg Park(Left) and (Right) Shopping street, Strøget

5) I have a tie here with Frederiksberg Park and Frederiksborg Palace :
Frederiksberg Park, was close to my apartment and I have seen many different typical Danish festival here, so you can say I am somehow emotionally attached with it. But the Castle and Natural beauty is really beautiful in this park, the zoo is next to it.
Frederiksborg Palace in Hillerød is located on three small islands in the middle of Palace Lake and is adjoined by a large, baroque formal garden.

There are many more places I have seen like Rosenberg Palace(pic), Frederiksdal, (Pic), Copenhagen Zoo. The National Gallery, an Art museum situated in Copenhagen centre is also worth visiting. But its difficult to cover by in short trip.

Here goes some more picture link.

5 comments:

Kalyan Panja said...

A really beautiful place & some beautifully captured shots. I wish I could visit those lovely places you have mentioned.

Lakshmi said...

Lots of information ...Thank you for taking me there already

Pijush said...

@Kalyan, I do feel fortunate to see so many places in Europe for my nature of Job. Thanks for the comment.

@Backpakker, Welcome again, Glad you liked the informations of my blog.

Sigma said...

Very lovely photographs. I especially liked the castle and the canal one. It sure is a beautiful place - one I would like to visit at least once in my lifetime :-)

"the head of the statue is replaced every year with a new one"
- now why would they do that ??

And I just saw that you are a programmer by profession. Take a look at my Coding blog ... you might find it of interest :-)

Pijush said...

Many thanks for such a lovely comment. Copenhagen is a place, close to my heart, a clean city and worth visiting. I loved living in this city .
I don’t know about the statue, but in 2004 they replaced it, when I was there.
Though I am a programmer, I do coding in SAP. So, your impressive blog on c/c++ has little overlapping.