Should we return to Denmark we’d probably explore its capital city but for this trip we’d booked a full day excursion that my wife had titled “Castles, Castles, Castles”. The first of the castles we were to visit was the home of the Danish Museum of National History, Frederiksborg Castle.

It was built as a royal residence for King Christian IV of Denmark-Norway in the early 17th century, replacing an older castle acquired by Frederick II and becoming the largest Renaissance residence in Scandinavia. Situated on three islets in the Slotssøen (castle lake), it is adjoined by a large formal garden in the Baroque style.

The castle building had suffered a serious fire in 1859, although most of the artwork inside had been saved. Reconstruction allowed the place to be opened up to the public around twenty years later and was undertaken due in part to donations from the founder of the Carlsberg Brewery, J.C. Jacobsen. The fountain in the courtyard was a replica produced at the same time, the original having been taken by Sweden during wars with the country in the centuries beforehand.

Many of the artefacts of the castles we would visit during this excursion had been taken by Sweden and the grudges were certainly still present. While our guide on the tour was Australian the driver was Danish and had taken the microphone on the coach at one point to ask if anyone on the coach knew what to do if they saw a Swede drowning.

“No,” we replied, assuming it to be a serious question.

“Good,” was his response.

As you can see we had wonderful weather for our visit to Frederiksborg Castle and we’d had a very easy drive to the historic location too, arriving in plenty of time to take a leisurely walk beside the gardens, stopping for a discussion of the history, then onto the exterior courtyard area to the rear of the castle. The museum part of the castle wasn’t yet open so there was a chance to grab some photos of the Neptune fountain and other buildings in the area.

Crossing a short bridge we entered into the walled courtyard part of the castle. This gave some in our group a chance to use the toilet and our guide to pick up the tickets for our visit. Other than a handful of pairs of tourists there was only one other tour group which got our guide quite excited as he’d never visited the castle when it wasn’t heaving with people.

The interior of Frederiksborg Castle is covered here.

The Chapel

The chapel in Frederiksborg Castle was the first area we ventured into. We entered on the balcony level and were taken around slowly in order that our guide could point out the main points of interest, those being the artwork on nearly every surface, the altar and pulpit, the organ, and the prayer chamber. While other parts of the castle had been gutted by the fire that swept through the building in 1859 the chapel had mostly escaped damage so most of what we saw were the original 17th century pieces.

The Audience Chamber

From the chapel we then headed to the audience chamber, a mostly bare room with at first only a single point of interest in the form of a piece of trompe-l’oeil artwork. This room encompassed some Baroque features into the other Renaissance style of decoration and our guide pointed out the motifs of the various kings of Denmark that adorned the walls and the base of the central dome.

Frederiksborg Castle Artwork

As we ventured through various other rooms and corridors in the musuem section of the castle we stopped a number of times to take a look at some of the artwork that had also survived the fire in the 19th century. It would be fair to say that beauty certainly is in the eye of the beholder and time has a way of changing what’s considered attractive.

The Great Hall

By far the most impressive room in the castle was the Great Hall. The hall was almost entirely destroyed in the fire of 1859 but architectural paintings allowed for a complete restoration by 1880. Having the large room practically to ourselves helped to picture just how magnificent a place it would have been for entertaining. A balcony for musicians along one wall and a fireplace at the far end of the hall with a table, chairs, and a statue were the only elements in the room allowing for the ceiling ornamentation, wall decorations and tapestries, and beautiful flooring to really be appreciated.

We gathered back in the courtyard after this (and were briefly sprayed with water from the Neptune Fountain when it suddenly activated and the wind caught the jets just right) before heading back to our coach for the next part of our full day excursion in Denmark. I snapped just a few more photos as we departed Frederiksborg Castle but for the pictures of the building’s exterior you can see my previous post: Frederiksborg Castle (Outside).

Since there’s only limited scope for trying to reword what’s already available on the internet I’ll quote from Wikipedia here:

Fredensborg Palace is a palace located on the eastern shore of Lake Esrum in Fredensborg on the island of Zealand in Denmark. It is the Danish Royal Family‘s spring and autumn residence, and is often the site of important state visits and events in the Royal Family. It is the most used of the Royal Family’s residences.

With our visit taking place in the summer there was nobody home. Well, I don’t think so, anyway. This stop was a brief one just to hear a few details about the building and to hop out to take some photos for five minutes.

Architecturally, the building wasn’t the most impressive we’ve visited and with no chance to explore closer on this visit there wasn’t a lot to recommend. While we’re happy to have seen it I wouldn’t say it’s worth going out of your way to take a look although if you’re in the area, as we were, then it’s something to check off.

The only point of interest in our brief photo stop at the Danish palace was watching the lone soldier marching back and forth in front of the building. We were able to get very close to him. It was interesting to see his reaction when a car turned onto the road approaching Fredensborg; while he never broke step once his head and eyes were turned and locked onto the vehicle the entire time. Good to see that level of alertness.

As we left Fredensborg Palace and made our way back to the coach we passed a group of soldiers drilling off to one side.

But first there was a break for lunch. Billed as a traditional Danish meal it was… interesting. We were told that the meal contained a variety of different types of food in small portions and that this was something that, historically, the Danes ate. Well, as with all these sorts of things you have to accept that things are often played around with for tourists and talking to a Danish friend of mine confirmed that she had never tried most of the food we ate. On the plus side there was some genuine Danish ale to drink; a lager, which isn’t my first choice of drink (or second through twentieth for that matter), but it was refreshing and helped some of the food down. Why does anyone need two different types of pickled herring anyway?

Our coach dropped us off about five minutes away from Kronborg on foot and we promptly made our way towards the castle. Helsingør seemed to be a fairly interesting place from the little we saw of it and is probably worth a visit in its own right.

The approach to Kronborg took us past a scale model of the stronghold, through a couple of gates, and across two moats. The structure’s location and heavy fortifications were due to its proximity to mainland Sweden with whom the Danes had frequently been at war over the centuries. Indeed, when we would get to look inside Kronborg Castle we would discover very little in the way of art or sculptures due to many of them having been taken as spoils of war in battle long since gone.

Inside the courtyard of Kronborg we were introduced to an actor playing Hamlet’s friend, Horatio. He would proceed to take us on a tour of various locations from the Shakespeare play, recounting events from the tale as if they happened to him. I would imagine that if you’re familiar with the story then there was interest in seeing the locations whereas if, like me, you’re not then this provided a compact form of the play acted out by a single person; this turned out to be really quite entertaining and there were even some special effects such as the appearance of ghost at one point.

Our guide, Horatio, wasn’t the only Hamlet actor present. As we came out of one section of the castle and made our way across the courtyard to enter another area we saw several others. Entertainingly, they stayed in character while interacting with tourists in our group and in others. A tennis-type game broke out at one point with the ball getting carried on the wind towards some visitors to the castle; this was met with commands to return the object at once by the queen. Everyone found this very amusing.

Back inside Kronborg we finished up our visit to the castle with Horatio guiding us through the Little Hall and some of the few tapestries remaining from a series commissioned in the 16th century by Frederick II, the Chapel, and, finally, the paintings-lined Ballroom which had been the largest hall in northern Europe when it had been built.

While not the most visually impressive castle inside, Kronborg was architecturally very interesting and its layout of moats and gates to the entrance was particularly nice. The historical connection to Shakespeare was good to experience and as part of a full day including the other castle and palace we’d visited this was an excellent excursion for our day in Denmark.

We’d been told that the Little Mermaid was smaller than you imagine and had anticipated something quite tiny but it was fairly close to life size and I was quite pleased that you could get very close to it. The statue had been vandalised with paint shortly before we’d visited the country and it was vandalised again shortly after we left but for our stop it was perfectly clean. Some fellow cruisers remarked how lucky it was that we got to see it in pristine condition but from a unique photographic memory perspective I wouldn’t have been dismayed to have been there while it was the victim of mindlessness.

Although our next stop would involve us heading southwards and further into the Baltic Sea in order to make for Sweden we couldn’t pass under the bridge between Sweden and Denmark and so had to track northwards initially in an anticlockwise direction around the island of Zealand (we would pass under the Great Belt Bridge during the night but on our return journey get to experience the event in daytime). This meant that the cruise ship would pass between the two countries near Helsingør and would give everyone a chance to see and take photos of Kronborg Castle. We’d already visited there on our tour so I entertained myself with a few shots of the top deck and the people who ventured out but it was still good to see the stronghold from the sea especially as we’d only recently explored inside it that day.

It’s difficult to keep me from snapping photos if the camera is in my hands even if I’d probably taken nearly-identical photos to those from the platform on previous Princess Cruises ships (or even the same one, as this was our second time on Crown Princess). You can never take too many photos, though.

We’re always fond of seeing or experiencing things that are the most or the least or the biggest or tallest or smallest, etc., so it was good to know that outside Asia the suspension bridge span of the Great Belt Bridge under which we would cruise was the longest in the world. There was a bit of haze on the horizon as the Crown Princess headed north between the two Danish islands of Zealand and Funen and it felt a little odd to notice the time ticking down when we were due to pass beneath the bridge yet still have no sight of it ahead. Slowly, the area on which we were standing in the shade started to fill up with more people.

Looking back at one point I noticed quite a bit of smoke coming from the stacks on the top of the ship. If you’ve seen many of my photos then you might be aware that I’m fond of the industrial feel in a photo; there’s a sense of brute force there and I think it forms a lovely contrast to a pleasant cruising picture. There’s no point pretending cruise ships don’t cause pollution, because they do. However, they’re vastly outnumbered by all the cargo transport systems around the world many, many times over so whenever someone moans about it using their phone or computer that will certainly have contributed to it all as well just roll your eyes and say nothing.

There was a noticeable buzz of excitement as the bridge started to loom into view and a sudden influx of more passengers onto the top deck and platforms of the ship. I’d selected my spot at the rear of the foremost, highest platform for a couple of reasons: because it was the highest, obviously, and because I quite like having some foreground interest in photographs. Whereas there seemed to be a lot of jostling for position and holding of cameras up high to take photos without obstructions I was more than happy to ensure people made up a portion of the pictures I was taking.

Cruising under the Great Belt Bridge was exhilarating. You can almost hear a whoosh! in your head as the concrete structure slips overhead surprisingly fast. You never really get a feel for how fast you’re travelling on a cruise ship at sea – especially one as placid as the Baltic – until you pass some static marker very close. And the underside of the bridge felt very close indeed. With the various masts ahead of us on the ship forcing the perspective somewhat there were gasps from people all around as it seemed like we only just cleared the bridge by a couple of metres; the reality was probably four-to-eight times that amount, but it still made for a fabulous experience and memory to treasure.

Another wonderful thing about an experience such as this one where a large group of strangers share a moment of amazement is the sudden sense of camaraderie that breaks out. Cruising with Princess over the years we’ve found that people who also enjoy our love of holidays at sea are generally sociable people anyway but you could see instantly far more talking amongst the groups who’d gathered to see us pass by the bridge. People were showing the photos they’d taken to everyone to compare and there was lots of small talk about how close the ship had been or how it compared to other under-bridge cruising that people had witnessed. I ended up speaking for some time to a solo traveller about photography in general who then turned out to live only a few miles away from us. Nice when that happens.

We waited for the stairs to clear a bit before making our way slowly down and back to the cabin to put away the camera, stopping for some shots of the busy top deck of the cruise ship. The day was young, there was a quiz coming up, and the lure of beers or early cocktails was starting to grow.

By the time we reached our room the Great Belt Bridge was starting to fade away into the haze in our wake.

To date this has been the only time we’ve passed under a bridge while on a cruise ship and it was a wonderful experience. Personally, I’d recommend getting where lots of other people are when it’s happening so that the excitement that emanates from your fellow travellers washes over you. I also think that if you can then try to get some people in the photos you take when you do something like this as they make for more emotive pictures to look back on later.

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.

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.

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.

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.