After getting up this morning and meeting the girls for a goodbye breakfast I went back to my room to finish packing. I tried to be very strategic and put only the stuff I need for the second portion of this trip on top so I'm not tearing apart my suitcase in every city! Lisa and I were both headed to hotels close to Copenhagen Central Station so we caught a ride to the airport with the Canadians and took the train from there. It turns out her friend's hotel was literally across the street from Kathleen's hotel! Not sure how much I mentioned before but one of my good friends from college, Kathleen, came over to Copenhagen on Friday and planned to meet me after the tournament to explore Scandanavia. I'm super excited to have a travel buddy for this portion of the trip.
Kathleen was waiting for me in the lobby of her hotel. She had arranged with the staff to store our bags there for the day which was awesome. She saw a lot of Copenhagen yesterday but had left a few things that I hadn't done for us to do together. First we went to Rundetaarn, also known as the Round Tower. It was built in the 1600's as an astronomical observatory. Today you can walk up a huge spiral ramp to the top. The ramp reminded me of something you'd see in the airport parking garage! The top offered really great views of the city and we saw where at night you can look at the stars. After Rundetaarn we decided to go see the famous Little Mermaid statue. I had seen it from the back when I took the boat cruise earlier in the week but we wanted to see it from the front. We walked there and wound our way through this beautiful park with an awesome old church. We took the typical tourist photos then headed to the Church of Our Savior. This church is famous because it has this huge spiral stair case that takes you to the top of the steeple and provides awesome views of the city. If you are claustrophobic this was definitely not the activity for you because that staircase was narrow! The view from the top was absolutely worth the climb, it was even better than the view from Rundertaarn. Afterwards we went into the church portion. It was your typical European church - gorgeous with tons of ornate details. Kathleen and I were laughing that we could now appease our Catholic family members and say we went to church on Easter Sunday! We then rewarded ourselves with a Danish pastry for lunch then headed back to the hotel to get our luggage to head to our ship.
In an effort to see as much as possible, we decided to take an overnight ferry to Oslo, Norway. We were both expecting a small ferry (I'm thinking something like the Cape May/Lewes Ferry and Kathleen was thinking the Martha's Vineyard ferry) but instead we literally boarded a cruise ship. We paid extra for a room with a view and while our room is small it is very cosy and much to my delight has a normal shower! I'm not sure I mentioned it but the showers in our hotel in Sweden were unique - you either had a room with a giant bathtub 3 feet off the ground or a shower where the shower head was chest hight with no door and lots of mirrors. We explored the ship and all of its various activities; a casino, a nightclub, restaurants, a duty free shop and pools! We made dinner reservations at one of the restaurants and promptly returned to our room to take a nap and relax. We did so much walking around Copenhagen we were both beat. My fitbit said I took over 25,000 steps and traveled 10 miles!
After dinner we watched the sunset over the ocean and now I'm sitting here typing this blog! Kathleen and I are going to watch a movie on an ipad then try to get to sleep early. However, at 10:30 I'm planning on trying to facetime with my family while they are at Easter dinner but we will see if it works since the internet is spotty at best. We arrive in Oslo tomorrow morning at 9:30. Anna from the tournament is off from work so she is going to meet us at our hotel and show us around the city. Looking forward to having a guide and seeing another part of Scandanavia!
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