Copenhagen and Ærø
Rick Steves' Europe: Episode # 105C
Denmark's Copenhagen welcomes visitors with remnants of Viking days and cosmopolitan flair. We join the locals for lunching, biking and boating before ending the day in the Tivoli Gardens amusement park. For a glimpse of long-ago Denmark, we board a train, then ferry to Ærø Island for a reminder of the world of Hans Christian Andersen.
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Travel Details
Jazz Festival
The Copenhagen Jazz Festival — 10 days starting the first Friday in July — puts the town in a rollicking slide-trombone mood. The Danes are Europe's jazz enthusiasts, and this music festival fills the town with happiness. The TI prints up an extensive listing of each year's festival events, or get the latest online. There's also an autumn jazz festival the first week of November.
Fight for Freedom Museum (Museum of Danish Resistance Frihedsmuseet)
The compelling story of Denmark's heroic Nazi-resistance struggle (1940-1945) is well explained in English, from Himmler's eyepatch to fascinating tricks of creative sabotage (on Churchillparken between Amalienborg Palace and The Little Mermaid, bus #26 from Langelinie or bus #1, #1A, #19, or #29 from farther away, tel. 33 13 77 14).
Tivoli Gardens
The world's grand old amusement park — since 1843 — is 20 acres, 110,000 lanterns, and countless ice-cream cones of fun. You pay one admission price and find yourself lost in a Hans Christian Andersen wonderland of rides, restaurants, games, marching bands, roulette wheels, and funny mirrors. Tivoli doesn't try to be Disney. It's wonderfully and happily Danish. I find it worth the admission just to see Danes — young and old — at play.
The park is open from mid-April to late September ( tel. 33 15 10 01). It's a children's fantasyland midday, but it becomes more adult-oriented later on. In winter, Tivoli opens for a week in mid-October, then for a Christmas market with ice skating on Tivoli Lake. Dress warm for chilly evenings any time of year. There are lockers by each entrance.
Tivoli is across from the train station. If you're catching an overnight train, this is the place to spend your last Copenhagen hours.
Pension Vestergade
Vestergade 44
Ærøskøbing
Tel. & fax 62 52 22 98
pensionvestergade44@post.tele.dk
Updated for 2010.