Raspberry Danish

 Flag's backward, I know

My American teammate and I headed over to the jewel in Scandinavia's crown, Denmark (that might not be true, but I liked the sound of it). Much to our surprise and greeeeat delight, it turned out we happened to roll into Copenhagen on the celebration of Queen Margrethe II's 40th jubilee. Yeah I don't really know what it means either but after chillin for a while outside city hall, we saw her in all her royal grandeur.

And sang the Danish national anthem like 8 times in a row while waiting for her to come wave on her balcony. She's the Queen, she can do what she wants I guess.Apparently the Danes really love her since her approval rating is like 80%. Keep doin your thing Margrethe.
So despite my impatience/mildly frozen toes, I wasn't about to go rogue and be the only person to boo her for taking her sweet time. The lady is 70. Plus with another 6+ footer rollin in our crew, we wouldn't really have been all that incognito.
Lesson for the kids - height has its downfalls. Heckle with care.

For all my irritation, all was forgiven when she finally came outside. Some people might grow tired of the undemocratic, excessively pompous obsolescence of a non-functioning monarchy.
I am not some people.
Having finally seen the queen (THE queen is probably somewhat heretical, sorry Elizabeth) in the flesh, I feel like I can now die happy. I've seen it all!

The rest of the day consisted of coming down from that high and trying not to freeze/trying to see stuff before the sun set shortly after 4 PM. By the time we got into the city, that left us like 3 hours... Luckily, the city's only an hour train ride from our digs and I visited København aka Merchant's Harbor for the first time back in the two zero zero seven. Feel free to drop that little bit of trivia about the city's name in your next dinner conversation.

I'll let the pictures do the talking.

En route

Rubbin' shoulders with the who's-who of Danish society on

Strøget aka Europe's longest pedestrian shopping street

View from the Rundetaarn aka Round Tower 

 Good eats

Lost in translation