A little history lesson...

Be prepared for a whole lot of pictures from all around Copenhagen. We had to give ourselves a walking tour of Copenhagen for one of my classes, so after a 4-hour walk around I was that much the more knowledgeable…now it’s your turn!

First, we have the Library Garden. I'm not quite sure what this surrounding building is but I liked the look of it.


These trees surrounded the center fountain of the garden.


And there it is, the central fountain....I'll have to go back when it gets warmer to see water actually flow through it.


...Complete with ducks and a duck house :)


Here's the Royal Library, more commonly known as 'The Black Diamond.' It's one of their famously designed buildings the Danes can boast about, if boasting was part of their demeanor.


The building on the left in this one is the Naval Church and I can't tell you what the other ones are, but I absolutely love this picture! The sun was just starting to set as we hit this point of the tour.


Alright, here's where the history lesson starts....no more of the "I don't remember, but it looks really cool" type buildings! This is the tower on top of the Bourse building. It was Copenhagen's first mall and was at one time their stock exchange. Today, it hosts office space for many different companies. The base has four dragon heads with their tails spiraling toward the top.

This is the Amager Market Place, and hundreds of years ago used to be the water front to Copenhagen. There is a nearby island called Amager and this is the place where they would come and sell their goods every week. The people of Copenhagen used to (and we're talking a couple centuries ago) purposely put landfill in the waterfront to strengthen it enough to eventually put buildings on it. Now, the waterline is roughly 1/2 to 3/4 miles to the west of this picture.



Built in the late 1600s this building now houses the Royal Copenhagen museum and store (where Hilary and I were able to paint those plates). It was restored roughly a century and a half ago but is one of the few remaining buildings from Kind Christian IV's reign.


These are the firehouses, and I'd bet you'd never guess why...they've never stored firetrucks or any of the sort here; they're called firehouses because they survived the second great fire that struck Copenhagen in the late 1700s. Their gabled roofs set them apart from the other storefronts in this area (called Greyfriar's Square).


Here we have the Israel Plads....which I consider Copenhagen's mini-Central Park. The small lake/pond zig-zags a little bit and was part of the canals that originally surrounded Copenhagen. There were benches and walking paths around here...


...and more ducks!


This is Copenhagen's Town Hall. I am 98% sure it's town hall number 5, and is by far the biggest. With the city expanding, they needed to keep switching buildings.


Here's the present day Court House...located right around the corner from my school (I'll get pictures of that up soon!). The statement at the top translates to "With law, man will build the land," and is from the mouth of Denmark's own Hans Christian Andersen (Can you tell their pretty proud of him).


Here's the Old Market Square with the New Market Square in the distance....where the court house (building with green roof) lies in the distance. Only a street, Stroget, separates the two. My school is about a half block to the right of this picture.


And, here is the inside of the Church of Our Lady where the crowned prince and his wife got married only a couple years ago. It's funny, they have a ton of postcards (I'm pretty sure I counted 6 at the post office alone) with the Royal family's pictures on them. I think we'd be pretty hard up to find a postcard of the Bush family in the states!


Check out that organ!!


Well, that's it for today kids...not too shabby--that was all from memory!