Loveli Tivoli and Danish Jewellery in Copenhagen

As I got off the shuttle bus in Copenhagen at 3pm after a bout of inconvenient rehearsals (but I guess we are supposed to be 'working' on a cruise ship after all) I found my folks and my man, and I knew that Stroget was the place to be. Stroget is the pedestrian street in town, and the pedestrians who go there had better like to shop! No problem for my mum and I. Coffee first, of course. Here are the two men in my life, and cups of Joe.

My mum and I went into a department store and hit the jackpot. Pilgrim is my favourite brand of jewellery, it's a Danish company, and this is the largest collection of it my mum and I had ever seen. She helped me buy, and buy we did.

My Dad and Eric read maps and chatted meanwhile, and en route to a Bronze jewellery museum (and gift shop, naturally, where my mum bought a beautiful knotted bronze pendant, a copy of the one in the museum) I fell in love with a cakey cow. And a chocolate fountain in a chocolate shop... Madonna had one, I WANT ONE!

We strolled over the canal, noting this spire with dragons on it, the tails are intertwined, and then through an alley looking for the Frederiksborg castle, built in 1560. Here's the View from a Window for the day, yes, arches count, AND Eric's in it, double points! We found the Royal Library Gardens, a very peaceful and pretty little spot, it's so nice here's Kierkegaard looking unusually happy for him, even though Eric's giving him the third degree.

This is the canal boat Mum and Dad went touring on earlier today, pretty tight going under the bridge there I'd say. And this is Hans Christian-Anderson's house.

I love this man's set-up. He's an artist, working from his boat. What a great way to go out, locate a subject and paint. I want one of those, too!

I'm curious too about this coat of arms with these lovely effeminate men bevelling in to each other.

Eventually we found the entrance to the castle, which is surrounded by a moat so only has one entrance to the courtyard. Here we are. It was beginning to rain, hence my parents' faces.

Eric left us to go play jazz onboard, so we agreed to meet later at Tivoli Gardens. It's 75 Krone just to go in, that's about £7.50 or $15 US, or you can buy a ticket that lets you go on all the rides you want for 200 Krone, yup $40. Copenhagen is not cheap, I heard that even a McDonalds small fries costs $4!

Anyway, Tivoli was opened in the 1840s I think, and is much more pretty and generally better than I thought it would be. It's a lovely relaxed mix of theme park (yes, I wrote relaxed!) 1940s-style funfair with stalls where your boyfriend can try and win you cuddly toys (my Dad won me a small monkey keyring on a darts game) over 30 restaurants, bandstands with Big-band music and garden walks lit with fairy-lights. Nobody in our party knows what a Hyggepianist is.

We ate in this restaurant, outside, called Parfuglen, just because we like trying to say it. The fish starters you see in my still life of the day were gorgeous and also included fois gras, and then we had steak and chips, with a huge bowl of bernaise sauce. Mmmm.

Eric rejoined us at Tivoli, and had a French hotdog (which apparently, like the phenomenon of the English muffin, are not actually indicative of any French foodstuff) which is like a hollowed-out piece of baguette which they stuff the hotdog into. The big question was how they get the hole in the bread. Do they bake it with something through the bread so the hole is already made, or do they gouge out the hole after it's baked, and if so what happens to all the wasted bread....my question-mark button doesn't work on this laptop, but these are my questions!

We jumped on a roller-coaster, which was 6 tickets to go on (you buy the tickets from various machines, they're 10 Krone each) and went around on it's route 4 times. It was tame, but cute.

Altogether it was a beautiful night. I love this picture of my mum at Parfuglen.

Outside the huge Town Hall building, which reminded me of the Rathaus in Hamburg, there was this imposing statue of a bull surrounded by chickens. When I asked what the bull was doing, Eric replied quickly "He's trying to work out if he's a bull or not." Interesting theory.