“Lars, I hear you’re the mayor of Skagen!”

“Yes, that’s true, Viggo. How nice to hear from you after all this time. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Well, Lars, I come with an amazing offer. I happen to have come into possession of more yellow paint than I can handle and I’m willing to let you have it for less than cost price. I’m taking a loss here and you’ll be doing me a favour while also getting an amazing bargain!”

“I… I don’t really know what to say, Viggo. I don’t think I need any yellow paint.”

“But your town, Lars! Picture it! Skagen. The yellowest town on Earth. Tourists will flock there!”

“It’s an interesting offer, Viggo, really it is. But I don’t think I can really…”

“How is your wife these days? Did you ever tell her the story of how you were also seeing my sister Kamilla when you were first dating her?”

“That yellow paint. How much did you say you wanted for it?”

And that’s the story behind Skagen’s yellow-plastered buildings with red tiled roofs. Probably.

There’s also probably a good story behind the prevalence of pizza places in Skagen. As we headed up through a pedestrianised area it seemed like every other place was selling pizza, and with it being so bright and sunny and with the cruise ship in port they seemed to be doing a decent trade. We, however, had another destination in mind.

We passed by plenty of market stalls before coming up a small square with a fountain and some modern art sculptures in it. These were designed by Poul Winther, an artist who was born in Skagen in 1939, and of whom there is very little other information available. We liked the artworks here; they’re our sort of abstract modernism.

The final landmark of note that we encountered before our intended destination was Skagen Church. It’s a hard-to-miss sight.

This building in this form dates from the turn of the twentieth century. A smaller church had existed in this spot for around fifty years prior to that but Skagen had become more religious than its size could cope with so it was extended and the taller tower was added by architects Ulrik Plesner and Thorvald Bindesbøll. Before that earlier church there had been other church buildings for the people of Skagen but this area of Denmark farmed to excess, removing too much vegetation in the area, and the result was shifting sand dunes that ended up winning the battle against man’s constructions. Indeed, if we’d not taken the war-related excursion earlier in the day then we would most likely have visited the still partly-buried church on the dunes instead.

“Father Henrik, long time no see.”

“Viggo? Is that really you?”

“It is I, Father, Jacob’s older brother, and I come with a bargain you and your congregation are going to love.”

“Yes, I bumped into Lars last week. How much do you want?”

Barely a minute’s walk from the church was what we really wanted to see: Skagen Brewery. This is the northernmost brewery in Denmark – which you probably could have guessed – and it boasts Denmark’s largest beer garden too. Established in 2005 in a former power-generating facility it brews its own beers and also distils gin. We tried the former in the garden and bought the latter to take back home with us. We are very fond of locally-produced drinks when we travel and I have to say that the beers were absolutely gorgeous, with different styles for all tastes.

After a very pleasant time in the sunshine we decided to make our way back to Sky Princess in the port. Now, if we’d paid a little bit more attention to the map then we’d have taken a shorter route – almost directly south – but we initially started off roughly heading back the way we’d come. This brought us in time to the statue of the Danish Fisherman and Rescuers dedicated to local heroes, which was nice enough but, it turned out, not that convenient for getting back to the cruise ship. We ended up having to double back on ourselves quite a bit in order to find the route that would get us back on board and that’s why there are perhaps more photos of Skagen’s waterfront area here than you might be expecting.

Back aboard Sky Princess we chatted and decided we really liked what we saw of Skagen, a place we’d never heard of prior to booking this cruise, and a place we’d neglected to look into too much. Skagen has a number of museums that look like they’d interest us, it’s got that dune-covered church we’d love to go and see, and there’s always the lure of a return visit to the brewery, so we’d jump at the chance to return here on some future trip.

We had plenty of time to chat about Skagen and gaze out at the sea because we ordered some snacks and drinks to our room. That took seventy five minutes to arrive. Not good, Princess Cruises.

We sat in a fairly empty lounge with the intention of having some drinks before dinner but after twenty minutes gave up waiting and placed orders on the app rather than hope some member of staff considered checking on the tables. Not good, Princess Cruises.

At sea in the evening we decided to dine in Alfredo’s after taking a look at the menu for the main dining room and not seeing anything that set us alight with excitement. The view from our table was very good and the food was lovely even if service was a bit sluggish. I say “sluggish”, but I mean “glacial”. The first courses were fine but dessert took forty five minutes to arrive after ordering it, and that was only after I’d attracted the attention of a waiter twice to see if we’d been forgotten (and we clearly had been). Not good, Princess Cruises.

In the next post in this Sky Princess cruise travelogue series we’ll be making the first of two visits to Oslo in 2022 and we’ll be heading off on an excursion that starts with a look around Vigeland Park.

Bangsbo Fort was constructed as part of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall defences for Germany’s invading forces during World War II, and its primary purpose was to protect the port of Frederikshavn just to its north which was an important transportation hub to Norway. The high vantagepoint on the cliffs – the bunkers are situated between sixty and seventy metres up – gave it a long range and wide field of view and cover. In total, the Germans laid down seventy bunkers in this clifftop location. A further ten were added after the war by the Norwegians who still maintain overall control of this fort.

After a bit of a look around outside we were eventually led into three of the bunkers that are open to visitors. The museum element of Bangsbo Fort came to the fore here and there were plenty of rooms in the tight spaces with war memorabilia in the form of German equipment, weaponry, mines (deactivated, I hope), and flags. One room was set up how it would have been for the soldiers stationed inside who would have been expected to survive bombing and gas attacks and remain within for some considerable period.

German bunkers were pretty much standardised across a few designs to make their construction easier and quicker so entrances at right angles, steel doors, protected ventilation systems and secure telephones, and emergency escape routes could be found everywhere here, and most likely in any other Atlantic Wall bunker still standing to this day. The Channel Islands contain the best preserved bunkers simply because Hitler considered them the most important (a symbol of taking British land) while the allies considered them strategically worthless and bypassed them completely.

Our guide gave us some warning about the last of the bunkers we visited, stating that it was down a steep slope and steps, and that anyone who wanted to stay up top near the café could do so. Regular readers – or occasional readers who’ve hit the big time and read the few articles where I’ve mentioned this before – will know that my wife has a bit of a reputation with slopes and steps and twisted ankles and knees so I did check with her and she decided to risk it. As it was, the slope was not that steep and the steps were very few. We’d been imagining somewhere out on the cliff edge perhaps but this was like walking down a small, grassy hill, mainly because it was exactly that. We got to pass by the impressive concrete structure of the observation bunker, and as someone with a keen interest in brutalism in architecture, and as someone with a keen interest in cruise ships (which this looked like the bridge of, a little), this was lovely to observe.

The last of the bunkers we visited was actually a gun battery, backed by the manufacturing and storage areas and the delivery rails that would have moved shells to the weapon. Quite how deafening it would have been in here when the gun was firing shocks me to think about it.

During the rapid expansion of the Atlantic Wall defences, getting hold of parts was sometimes an issue for the teams of German engineers so they took what they could from the occupied lands. The gun in place here at Bangsbo Fort came from an artillery ship called the Niels Juel which had been decommissioned in the interwar years before the need for training amidst rising European tensions saw her re-enter service with the Danish navy. Following Germany’s invasion of Denmark, the Danes were allowed to keep their fleet for training purposes, but increased resistance in the population (see the previous post in this series for more about that) led the Germans to suddenly move to seize all the vessels. Niels Juel was able to make a break for freedom but was spotted and attacked by the German fleet leading the Danish crew to attempt to scuttle the ship. This was only partially successful and the ship was eventually refloated, towed for repair, and disarmed.

Is it just me, or does the gun battery at Bangsbo Fort look like an elephant?

One of the weirdly impressive elements of this visit to Bangsbo Fort bunker museum was that as we gathered together at the end of our allocated time we could gaze out from the cliffs and spot our cruise ship docked in Skagen to the north along the coast. The size of the ship compared to the town is stark, and even more so when you consider that the distance between these two points in Denmark as the crow flies is around thirty five kilometres.

A very enjoyable visit indeed, aided by some lovely weather affording us splendid views over land and sea. We always enjoy museums, and if you’re visiting Europe then it’s hard to avoid any of that pesky war stuff since we’ve had a few over the centuries, but why would you want to when it’s all so fascinating?

That brought our organised tour to an end but we were given the option to be dropped off in Skagen on the way back to the ship, and since we had plenty of time before Sky Princess was due to leave that’s exactly what we opted to do. You can read about our look around Skagen in the next post in this cruise travelogue series.

There will be more about Skagen itself later in this cruise travelogue series, but this and the follow-up post will cover the excursion we took along the coast to the area around Frederikshavn.

First up, just for completeness, a few views from our balcony aboard Sky Princess in the morning. With the direction the ship was facing we didn’t get much of a feel for what Skagen was like until we’d boarded the tour bus and driven through it. Our general feeling even then was that it was small with not a lot to do or see, but we’d come to a completely different conclusion by the end of the day.

Our tour started with a visit to the Coastal Museum of Bangsbo, part of the Nordjyllands Kystmuseum group of museums in this area.

The museum is situated in the grounds of a manor that dates from 1364 but which saw its most interesting period of history at the turn of the twentieth century when it became a hub for Scandinavian artists and writers, including those associated with the Modern Breakthrough movement. The grounds were lovely and peaceful, with the moat surrounding some of the buildings acting as a wonderful mirror for the picturesque location. We’d actually turned up so early that the museum hadn’t opened when we arrived so had more time than anticipated to take in the views.

The overall theme for the tour we’d taken in this part of Denmark was World War II-related so the primary point of this initial visit to the Coastal Museum of Bangsbo was to see the exhibition about the German occupation of northern Denmark with a focus on the resistance movement. Danish resistance during the war was slow to evolve. The Germans had allowed the Danes to mostly govern themselves with some censorship and a ban on trading with allied forces being the only major impacts to general life. As a result, initially there was little in the way of a desire to fight the relatively small occupying force. However, there were those opposed to the Nazis and there were communication channels open to Britain so cells did start to form, initially for spying purposes, then increasingly towards sabotage and more lethal acts towards both the Germans and collaborators in their country. Britain regularly parachuted in people and equipment to assist in the effort.

We’ve seen a fair number of war exhibitions at museums around Europe and we never tire of them; it’s a fascinating part of history and a useful reminder about what you should do when you see a Nazi or see someone expressing support for their position. The Bangsbo museum is well worth a visit to see their collection and read about the Danish resistance.

In the same building there was a space dedicated to Danish seafaring through the ages. This made sense, given it’s a coastal museum, after all. We didn’t really have enough time to give this exhibit any justice but there were some nice models of vessels – and being cruise fans and natives of a naval port city we always like boats and ships in any form – and some interesting figureheads.

The showpiece of the Coastal Museum of Bangsbo gets a building all to itself. This building housed reasonably well-preserved remains of an old ship that at first sight, and given this part of the world, you might imagine is Viking in origin, but it’s actually a little later than that, dated by specialists to 1163. The medieval ship is fourteen and a half metres long and would have traded with Scandinavian and Baltic countries. Its discovery in 1922 in a stream suggests that a natural harbour once existed in the part of Denmark in which it was found.

Our short but interesting visit to the Bangsbo Coastal Museum finished with a walk past the lovely view of the manor grounds once more as we made our way to the bus.

In the next part of this cruise travelogue series covering what we did while docked at Skagen, we’ll be visiting Bangsbo Fort, part of the Atlantic Wall defences constructed by Germany to protect their invaded lands from allied attacks.

Excellent, we thought, and I’ll explain why.

• Denmark has some decent craft ale places.
• We like craft ale.
• On the ship they’d mentioned that there was a shuttle bus service in operation running between the cruise terminal and a road very close to where a particular craft ale bar was located.
• On the ship they’d mentioned that you could pay (or flash your medallion, or whatever) when boarding the bus; no need to book.
• On our tour our guide told us “Anyone who doesn’t want to take the excursion bus back, I can show you where the shuttle bus is.”

We had a plan! With our walking excursion done we’d treat ourselves to a few beers and take the shuttle bus back to the ship. Sounds simple. Couldn’t be simpler. Nothing could possibly go wrong unless the ship and our guide had given us duff information, but what are the odds of that happening?

So, very quickly we found ourselves in Skaal and not so quickly after that – because the choice on offer was, well, see for yourself – we found ourselves enjoying some lovely craft beer. Nice, clean venue; wide range of styles of beer. You couldn’t ask for a better place to recuperate a little after all that walking on the tour earlier in the day.

We stayed for more than one because the first drinks were nice enough to encourage that sort of behaviour in us, but then we contemplated whether to look for somewhere else or make an earlier-than-necessary return to the ship. We opted to head back as we’d done a lot of walking and our hoodies were still a little damp from the torrential rain that had caught us in the morning.

And here’s where things took a turn for the very annoying.

At the shuttle bus stop there was a shuttle bus sitting there. It looked like one for Princess but we weren’t sure, and at the time we arrived there was nobody up front so we could have got on and chanced it, but we’re honest and cautious people and knew that we needed to pay as per the ship’s instructions. A man appeared after a few minutes and asked for our ticket.

“We don’t have one. We were on a tour that’s dropped us off in the city and they said we could pay for a ticket on board to get back.”

“Oh no. You can only buy tickets for the bus at the cruise port. I’m not allowed to let anyone without them on.”

Yeah, to say we were angry with the information that had been provided by Princess Cruises to us both on the ship and on the tour was an understatement. The man there was apologetic but his hands were tied. He gave us options and some finger-pointing in the rough direction we’d need: train or taxi, because buses didn’t go where we had to go, apparently. The train would have only got us so far, and he didn’t know the number of any taxi firms. Uber proved to be a non-starter, but we had enough time and enough mild fury to power our legs to start walking back anyway. There was not much in the way of sightseeing on this unexpected walk of some of Copenhagen’s streets and the only conversation was around how pissed off we were with Princess.

Let’s try to bring out some positive aspects of this unplanned, unwanted, and infuriating walk back to the cruise terminal. Never let it be said: “Yeah, that Mark only knows how to rant.”

We like modern art and street art, and on the bus from the ship in the morning we’d passed a set of sculptures by the roadside that our guide had mentioned briefly in passing. These were the Toddlers on the Road of Life by Bjørn Nørgaard. The four sculptures represent a child, an adolescent, an adult, and a pensioner, with the materials and decorations reflecting those ages and the brightness of the sculptures and the slowly darkening gold showing life’s effects on aspirations and experiences. We loved them, and if we hadn’t had to walk then we wouldn’t have seen them up close, so a small yay for unexpected discoveries.

There was also some more conventional street art on walls as we got closer to the port and some artistic flair to the otherwise seemingly-abandoned miniature golf course we passed by.

Now, that walk back to Sky Princess at the cruise terminal took us two hours, but before you raise a hand to your forehead and collapse in a faint worthy of the best period dramas let me point out that we did find another small place that was open on the route to have a drink in and that accounted for a decent chunk of minutes in that duration. To be fair, it hadn’t been our intention to have a drink – our priority was finding a toilet because of the drinks we’d already had in Skaal making their way through our bodies – but it served to break up the walk and dilute the strong emotions towards our cruise line, and we had plenty of time to play with. That place, incidentally, was Tio Mario’s, and we extend our thanks to them for being there just when we needed them.

Back on board Sky Princess, then, and after a long day exploring Copenhagen on foot, both planned and unplanned, dinner and cocktails felt oh so good, so here, enjoy this feast of photos of both of them.

Sky Princess had a late departure from Copenhagen but there was still some lovely light on the horizon when we did so. They’re the sorts of views to almost make you forgive a cruise company for giving you a minor panic attack in a foreign country. Almost.

Okay. So, not the best ending to a day in Copenhagen with Princess Cruises, but overall we enjoyed it and had some interesting experiences, and isn’t that what life and travelling is all about?

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be making a stop at Denmark’s northernmost town, Skagen, and it’s an absolute gem of a place that we’ll explore a little (and drink in a little) after a war-related tour that starts at the Coastal Museum of Bangsbo.

Copenhagen is awash with some great examples of architecture, and Danmarks Nationalbank designed by Arne Jacobsen was one such piece that caught my eye more than the rest of our tour group or guide who were all far more interested in the statue beside which we next gathered. If you do a search for Arne Jacobsen chairs using your preferred search system of choice then you’ll realise that you’ll have seen his modernist designs already, I’m sure.

But back to that statue, now. Niels Juel was a Danish admiral and something of a naval hero to the Danes following successful defences of Copenhagen and attacks on Sweden. He was responsible for advances in the reputation of the Danish Navy, and died at the age of 68 as chief of the admiralty. He and his wife were buried in the church below the photos of his statue here, but we headed swiftly past that to the next site of interest.

Just up the road was the seat of the Danish Parliament and home to its Supreme Court, Christiansborg Palace. A palace or castle has stood in this position in Copenhagen since the twelfth century with the first being attributed to Bishop Absalon in 1167. From 1417 ownership of whichever building was on this site transferred – not willingly, mind – from the church to the royal family. The 1730s saw the construction of the first Christiansborg Palace. But there was a fire near the end of the century. The second Christiansborg Palace was built and completed in the early 1800s. But there was another fire near the end of the century. Sticking two fingers up to fate, a third Christiansborg Palace was constructed, and that’s the majority of what still stands today. Unless there’s been a fire since I wrote this.

King Frederik VII was the only king to live in the second Christiansborg Palace and it’s his statue that stands out in front of the present-day building.

Moving on from the palace, we headed in the direction of The King’s New Square, on the way passing by a statue of another former resident of the Christiansborg Palace spot, the first to live there, Bishop Absalon, who managed to have his fingers in all the pies of the church, politics, and the military.

The King’s New Square, or Kongens Nytov, is the largest public square in Copenhagen, and dates from 1670 in the reign of Christian V, of whom there is a statue in the centre. The Danes do like a statue of a person on a horse. A number of important buildings face onto the square, but easily the most attractive and impressive architecturally was the Royal Danish Theatre, constructed in 1874.

Odd Fellows Mansion was the next destination on this walking tour of Copenhagen, but not just to stand outside and admire the mid-eighteenth century Rococo design. A bonus of our walking tour was actually getting to eat a Danish pastry in Denmark, and with this being a tour organised for people on a cruise ship it also provided a good spot to use the toilets. A nice enough building inside, but nothing spectacular if I’m being honest, and I’m always being honest.

We would have just one more sight to see in Copenhagen on this organised walk and that would be on the way back to meet the bus that would (or could) take us back to the ship. We headed through the lovely green space of the oldest park in the city, the King’s Garden. It’s alternatively known as the Rosenborg Castle Gardens and the reason for that will become clear, but first a revisit to the Danish fixation with statues and that promised mention of Hans Christian Andersen once more. The bronze work of art dates from 1880.

Another statue that caught our eye was that of Little Gunver by the nineteenth century sculptor Theobald Stein. Little Gunver relates to a song about a young girl drawn to the bottom of the sea by a deceitful merman. How lovely.

Rosenborg Castle was the impossible-to-miss landmark that sat at the far end of the gardens on our way through the parkland, and is an early seventeenth century Dutch Renaissance style building commissioned by Christian IV, one of many of his architectural projects in and around Copenhagen. It’s easy to see how similar it is to Frederiksborg Castle that we’d visited on our previous cruise to Denmark back in 2017.

And with that our walking tour of Copenhagen came to an end. Sort of. Well, not quite. We could have got on the bus that was waiting to take our tour group back to Sky Princess but our guide mentioned to us that a paid-for shuttle bus service was running between the ship and the city and gave us directions from where to pick it up. We’d known about this bus as it had been mentioned on the ship – “There will be a paid shuttle service and you can buy tickets on board” it had said in the daily programme of events – and we knew that we had several hours before the ship would leave. We realised that we’d have the chance to drop into a bar and grab some local beers before heading back. What could be nicer? What could possibly go wrong?

You’ll have to read the rather unplanned part three of the Copenhagen walking tour to find out.

A difference from the previous visit to Copenhagen in 2017 was that we were docked considerably further away from the city than before. This too will factor into the third part of this tour. Fortunately, though, we’d be using a bus to get to the start of the walking tour and, as it happened, this would provide some useful guidance for the route back to the ship later in the day. That you can read about in the final part. I am really bigging up the final part. It’ll be the bit where we got pissed off at Princess Cruises. But I’ve said too much already!

So, let’s get on with the organised walking tour of Copenhagen.

We’ll start with the view from our balcony on Sky Princess. It was a grey day in Copenhagen with the weather forecast for some light rain at some point.

After a drive from the cruise port we were debarked from the bus near The Little Mermaid; one of many groups and individuals arriving to view one of Denmark’s most-visited attractions. Yes, we’d seen it before, but it was nice to see it again, given its iconic status.

There are some people who will tell you that The Little Mermaid is disappointing in real life and that it is smaller than you might think. And to those people I would simply point out that the clue is in the name. It would be like getting disappointed with the pensive pose of Rodin’s The Thinker. And you never hear people mutter “Well, I thought The Little Mermaid was generally okay, and I didn’t have any issue with it being little, but that fish tail thing. What’s with that?” Anyway, the sculptor was Edvard Eriksen and it was first unveiled to the Danish public and the world at large in 1913.

Our walk next took us to Kastellet, meaning Citadel. Kastellet is a fortress, originally built in the seventeenth century but with a number of extensions and modifications since that time. Its form is that of a pentagon with bastions, in a similar design to many others around Europe at the time. Indeed, we have similar, partial fortifications in this same shape in our home city of Portsmouth (see: Old Portsmouth Shoreline Walk), although Copenhagen’s are far better preserved.

The moat around the fortifications was particularly photogenic, helped by that light grey cloud that added some nice, polarised reflections.

Kastellet is used as military barracks but during its opening hours it’s free for anyone to wander through the streets that make up the interior of the structure. As we reached the opposite side of the city’s fortress to that we’d entered we got a good view of some of the active military presence still there.

By now we were on the southern side of Kastellet and on our way to the next dedicated photo stop for this Copenhagen walking excursion. Our route there took us past more of the moats that protect the citadel and afforded us some nice views of St Alban’s Church. You might be thinking “Weird. Sounds a bit English.” If so then you get a gold star and a VIP pass to Anglican Heaven because, yes, St Alban’s is Denmark’s only Anglican church and is known to the locals as “the English church” too. The church dates from the late nineteenth century, built as part of the growing connection between the UK and Denmark through royal marriage, but services had been given in English for well over a hundred years prior to that due to increasing European trade and the number of English-speakers in Denmark in general.

As befits a military establishment, there were a couple of military statues that we passed as we continued our walk. The first of those was Our Fallen, a statue commemorating the dead of World War II, designed by Svend Lindhart and erected in 1957. The second was a bust of Winston Churchill, sculpted by Oscar Nemon in 1955. In fact, this parkland area just beside Kastellet is named Churchillparken as thanks for British assistance in liberating Denmark from the Germans.

A very short walk from there brought us to the next point of interest on this Copenhagen walking tour: Gefion Fountain. The name comes from the Norse goddess, Gefjon, generally associated with ploughing, hence the presence of oxen in the sculptures. The fountain was designed by Anders Bundgaard who sculpted the figures in the very final years of the nineteenth century with the main basin of the fountain being finished off in the first years of the twentieth century ahead of its first switching-on in 1908. The commission of the fountain in 1897 tied in with the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Carlsberg Foundation who donated the fountain to the city.

The Gefion Fountain depicts the legend of the forming of the island of Zealand on which Copenhagen is located. The goddess was promised however much land she could plough in one night by the Swedish king who had not reckoned on her turning her four sons into oxen in which to help out. The land was then scooped up and thrown into the sea where it now stands.

This area of Copenhagen that we were now in is called Nordre Toldbod, the former site of the customs house that collected taxes from merchants. These days it’s more a basic waterfront area but with a few notable sights and ghosts of its former status. A statue of Mercury atop one of the gates to the former port area is by the nineteenth century sculptor Carl Christian Peters; a statue of Neptune sits opposite. The dragon street lights were particularly nice. Installed in 1892 they were designed by Vilhem Dahlerup.

Nordre Toldblod is also one of the best spots in Copenhagen to see Her Danish Majesty’s Yacht Dannebrog. This early 1930s yacht serves as the official Danish Royal Family’s residence for their summer cruises and state visits overseas. Royal quarters aboard are all aft of the funnel.

I have a fondness for sculptures and statues (but I keep it quiet and you wouldn’t know if I didn’t take every chance to mention the sculptors and dates and names of everything I see like you actually cared about them at all) so a few more here along the waterfront to mention. The bronze replica of Michaelangelo’s David is part of the Royal Cast Collection which are mainly housed in the building beyond it. This collection was founded by Carlsberg once again, who had a keen interest in art. More interesting to me, but I suspect not of interest to anyone in our walking tour group who all wandered past it without a second glance or any offered information from our guide, was the post-war abstract form in concrete called Toldboden by sculptor Søren Georg Jensen. Initially working with naturalistic forms (and he also created a replica of David) his work became more influenced by modernist and functionalist designs.

The last tourist spot in Copenhagen that I’ll cover in this first part of our walking tour of the city is Amalienborg. This large, open, octagonal space is surrounded by palaces for the Royal Family. The lack of flags flying when we visited suggests that it wasn’t occupied by any of them at the time. In the centre of the eight-sided square is a statue of King Frederik V mounted on a horse; sculpted by Jacques-Francois-Joseph Saly, this was erected in 1771. Should you arrive at Amalienborg around midday then you might just see the changing of the guards taking place. We passed some by as we headed rather quickly through because, as you might be able to tell from the photos, that forecast for light rain at some point I mentioned earlier magically transformed itself into a surprisingly determined downpour just at that moment.

We were a little soggy as we headed off for the remainder of our walking tour, passing briefly on the way out of the Amalienborg area by the bust of Roosevelt, unveiled in 1953 and sculpted by Jo Davidson. If you were looking for military connections and statuary on a web post about walking around Copenhagen then you’ve certainly come to the right place.

In the next part of this cruise travelogue series I’ll conclude the organised walking tour of Copenhagen that we undertook. However, you already know that there are three parts to this walking tour write-up so that suggests that there’s something a little unorganised to follow on from that. But what is it? You’ll just have to wait to find out.