Will We Or Won't We?

The big 'will we or won't we' day, and early indications were good - all flights to Iceland were running, and on time. However, there will still a few hours for things to go wrong.

Denmark is a nice place. There are a lot of old buildings, and so many lovely parks. However, from a tourist's point of view it doesn't have much that compels you to come and see it. Even Legoland is an expensive theme park a long way from the city. The people are friendly, but they don't like you sitting next to them. They'll put bags and coats all around them on seats so you can't sit there, and will only move them if you insist. They'll even sit sideways on train seats so you can't sit down. Prices on most things are about the same as home, although suburban trains cost a lot, and food is still expensive. The Big Mac index is AU$10 which is on the high side, but not gob-smackingly expensive like Norway. We stopped questioning whether we really needed to eat like we did there.

Packed and had breakfast, left our bags in our room, then headed off into town to see a few last minute things we had hurried past in the rain. Found ourselves as extras in a movie or commercial (it was hard to tell which) as the railway station was being used in a shooting location and there were extras up and down the platforms and escalators.

Started by walking to where the Little Mermaid should have been but wasn't. I've never seen so many people standing around ogling something that wasn't there. The Little Mermaid and her rock are both in China for the World Expo until November, but that didn't stop the tour buses. After all, its on the schedule. Actually, they had a huge video screen erected in the water, so you could see the Little Mermaid live in her pavilion in China.

Then back past the fortress to try for a photo, to the Rosenborg Castle where we did a tour of the castle museum and treasury. Each of the four kings to live there has their study preserved the way they had it, and re-creations of other king's studies from other palaces were also on display. We then toured the armoury and looked at the Danish crown jewels. Actually I thought it was better that the British crown jewel display.

Turned out that today was a public holiday for Himmelfart's Day (whatever that is), which kind of explained the lack of crowds and why shops were closed, but it took us till lunchtime to realise. Not having anything open for tea, we picked up our bags in the late afternnon, didn't find any more bodies, and went out to the airport quite early (actually 5 hours early), which was a blessing as the airline had cancelled our reservation because our online internet booking agency hadn't issued our tickets even though they were fully paid for. The airline wouldn't issue them without ticket numbers, so there I was ringing an Australian company at 2am their time on a public phone, trying to get the numbers. All got sorted in the end, or so we thought, but then the boarding passes they printed were rejected at the gate and had to be re-issued.

The good news is that as I write this, we are halfway to Iceland, and I'm staring out the window at the red sunset somewhere up near the Arctic Circle. Seems we might actually get there.