Copenhagen

Copenhagen advertises that it has the longest pedestrian-only street in Europe.  It’s actually several streets that stretch from world famous Tivoli Gardens — which provided inspiration for Disneyland and still provides a sparkling night-time walk decades after my wife first visited — to the festive Nyhavn from which most canal tours launch.  There is fun dining at both ends of this passage, and all along the way. Lots of tourists and street performers.

As much a fantasy world as Tivoli Gardens, but with a totally opposite look is the bohemian “freetown” neighborhood called Christiania.  It was settled by squatters in 1971 and subsequently tried repeatedly to secede from the rest of the world.  The community likes to consider itself a sovereign entity.  Indeed, the strictures of society do not seem to fully apply when it comes to public health standards or controlled substances.

Our time in Copenhagen coincided with a state visit by French President Emmanuel Macron, which added pomp and circumstance to a city that has routine ceremony on behalf of Denmark’s monarch, Queen Margaret II, who we learned is quite well liked by most Danes….although perhaps not so much by most residents of Christiania.

JER