COPENHAGEN, DENMARK: LITTLE MERMAID AND TIVOLI GARDENS--EXQUISITE!

Wednesday, August 19, 2026
Copenhagen, Denmark
63F and rainy

The Little Mermaid

I started the day at 6 a.m. BECAUSE I could not find MY medallion last night and I knew that since today was a “turnaround” day the front desk would be very busy and I better get moving early. My medallion was in a Princess bracelet that I have had for years and the whole bracelet must have fallen off in my short trip from dinner back to the stateroom last night.  Evidently the Princess medallion printer was not working, so they gave me an old-fashioned key card like hotels use. I knew this was going to be an interesting day.

Every single passenger was required to disembark for immigration purposes, so at 8:15 a.m. TK and I headed to the port area to catch the Princess bus for the City Tour and Tivioli Gardens.  There are 1089 guests continuing on to Boston---I mentioned yesterday that it was suggested we take a tour because lines would be long in the morning for guests boarding the ship.

Denmark has a population of over six million and is about the size of Wisconsin, according to Natalya, our guide for the day. It has 1400 islands, but only 70-75 are permanently inhabited. Denmark is a Constitutional Monarchy, but the king as no political power.  The monarchy is over 1000 years old.

Domed building is the King' s palace

Many "canals" in Copenhagen

Copenhagen seems to be a series of islands with dozens of bridges. Its core population is 660,000 residents.  As we drove along, the streets were clean, bridges all over, old and new architecture, bicycles everywhere, even in the rain.

Natalya said that bicycles are more important then the car and she told us to be sure to stay in the pedestrian sidewalk area to avoid a bicycle collision. She also said that Danes are not afraid of the cold and even swim in the winter.

Hans Christian Andersen is one of their beloved story tellers—e.g. The Ugly Duckling, Little Mermaid, The Emperor’s New Clothes—and our first stop was the iconic Copenhagen bronze statue, the Little Mermaid, on the Langeline Promenade. Some say the statue is over-rated, but I definitely wanted to see her, as it evokes strength, love, and dignity to me. Created in 1913 by Edvard Ericksen, it has been vandalized and recreated multiple times. She endures!

Little Mermaid
Iconic statue in Copenhagen

We stopped by the Copenhagen Opera House, the most expensive to build in the world ($370 billion in U.S. dollars). Finished in 2005, it has five connected stages and seats 1500-1700 people. We did not enter.

Copenhagen Opera House

On our way from the port

Magasin du Nord

A shopping center I did not go to!

Tivoli Gardens—nothing like taking 30 senior citizens to an amusement park for 1.5 hours in the rain. That said, it was beautiful! Natalya said that Walt Disney visited Tivoli in 1951 and the park inspired Disneyland. It was built in 1853, 183 years old—the 2^nd oldest operating amusement park in the world! (Number 1 is Dyrehavsbakken [aka Bakken] located in Klampenborg, Denmark, which opened in 1583!)

Entrance to Tivoli Gardens

Gardens all over!

I had a burger here-very tasty!

Those round objects

hanging from the tree are

hanging flower baskets

A few rides we saw

Fountains galore!

Peacock #1

Merry Go Round

Peacock #2

He even posed for me!

Tivoli has one of the world’s oldest operational wooden roller coasters, called Rutsjebanen.

Goodbye, Tivoli!

We could definitely see what might have influenced Walt Disney—the perfect gardens, food halls, fountains, elegant restaurants, clean walkways. Tivoli was beautiful.

When we returned to the ship, the lines were unbelievably long, and we waited at least 1.5 hours to board, even though we were “In Transit” guests. We have never experienced such a kerfuffle on Princess before. People were irate/furious—both those people boarding for the first time and those in transit. It will be interesting to see how Princess tries to smooth this over.

We are ready for a sea day. And no Starbucks mug nor LEGOs. Our tour did not stop to shop…

TK's Takes: Copenhagen seems more spread out--there didn't seem to be a centralized "old town." The canals were nice.  There seems to be quite a debate about the kerfuffle boarding the ship--supposedly it was the Danish immigration process, not Princess' fault. 

ALL ABOARD THE SAPPHIRE PRINCESS IN THE BALTIC SEA!

Friday, August 7, 2026

On the Baltic Sea/Aboard Sapphire Princess
Baltic Sea—the Øresund Strait, 2.5 miles wide, between Sweden and Denmark
64 F and cloudy

Flag of Denmark

Clarion Suites-Airport

After ten hours of sleep, I was awake before TK.  We met our Uber driver to take us to the port—he drove through Copenhagen, so we had a little taste of the city.  It is not like the Mediterranean cities I am used to. We saw single family homes, garages, no red clay roofs, and there were large apartment buildings in this city with a population of almost 700,000 people.

Department store in downtown Copenhagen

Downtown Copenhagen

I take such great photos from an Uber

Downtown Copenhagen

TK spotted our ship before I did. The port traffic was light, and the terminal was not crowded. It did not take long to board the ship—TK does so much preplanning: our stateroom, dining room, soda package, Internet package, all set up before we even get on the ship. Lucky girl I am.

Sapphire Princess Stats:

Grand Class
Built in Nagasaki, Japan by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in 2004/$400 million
951 ft. in length—121 ft. beam—17 decks
1337 staterooms—1100 crew---2670 passengers

Stateroom D317-Deck 9

This might be the largest

stateroom we have ever had!

Nice size balcony

Our luggage is unpacked, we explored some of the ship, and we had dinner.  We like a table for two, separate —not a “bank” of tables for two. Fortunately we have what we want!  For dessert we had sticky toffee pudding for our Scottish Cruise Friend Mike.

Sticky Toffee Pudding

(not quite as good as Edinburgh)

As we departed Copenhagen while dining, we heard the Captain mention that we would pass by Kronborg Castle—the setting for Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, and the most powerful and important castle in Scandinavia!  The current castle was finished in 1585 and is located at the narrowest point of the Strait of Øresund.  

Kronborg Castle

(Elsinore in Hamlet--Elsinore is the English version of the 

name Helsingor, the city the castle is in)

Our state room is on the port side, so we watched Denmark float by after dinner—if we were on the starboard side, we would have seen Sweden! This point is the entrance to the Baltic Sea making it a strategically very important location.

 The region that is today southern Sweden (Scania) has belonged to Denmark for most of history. The Danish king, therefore, also had a powerful fortress on the other side and controlled the passage in and out of the Baltic Sea. The king collected taxes from all the trade ships passing by. At times, these taxes financed more than a third of the expenses of Denmark.  Interesting!

I watched as we sailed for an hour and may have seen the castle.  Hamlet was one of my favorite Shakespeare plays—I hope my students liked it as much as I did!

TK’s Takes: Passing through Copenhagen he remarked about so many bicycles without locks outside homes and even in the city near sidewalks and stores. We realize some were for rent, but not all of them.  Traffic was light.

 He liked boarding the ship so easily, but this was the first time we ever put our own luggage on a conveyor belt to the ship. We were in our room by 1 p.m.  The ship is smaller than most we have been on and it has a library!

Our dining room servers are both from Thailand—we mentioned that our daughter in law’s brother is in his 2^nd year of teaching in Thailand! 

Clarion Hotel Lobby

I liked the lighting

WE ARRIVED SAFE AND SOUND IN COPENHAGEN, DENMARK!

Wednesday-Thursday, August 5-6, 2026
Clarion Suites-Airport Hotel
Copenhagen, Denmark
70F and sunny!

 

Aren't clouds interesting?

Erie County's Landfill--the tallest "hill" in

Erie County

Wednesday morning at about 10 a.m., Friend Ann generously picked us up to go to the Erie Airport.  And just like that, off we soared, Erie to Charlotte to London to Copenhagen. I can’t sleep on a plane, but TK caught a few Zzz’s.  That said, we have been awake now for 30 hours straight and are still sort of functioning.  Denmark is on Central European Summer Time, so we are now six hours ahead of Erie time.

 Every flight was on time, and quite smooth with very little turbulence. We could not complain about any portion of the trip. We had long layovers and I ended up starting and finishing Connelly’s Daylight and started Button Club Friend Judy Sharer’s Secrets in Room 4.  I also read a couple magazines and did crossword puzzles.   This year I purchased a “neck light” so that I could read in the dark without using the overhead light to disturb seatmates. TK made fun of me, but I think it is the best travel gadget!

 

All of our luggage arrived with us!  At Heathrow, we had to go through security again, and the TSA people really inspected my laptop. I was afraid of a repeat of what happened in the Frankfort, Germany Airport in 2024 when TSA claimed my laptop had some sort of explosive traces on it. At that time Derek, our guide and German teacher at Collegiate Academy straightened things out—for all I know he told them I was an old lady and how on earth would I have access to such things.  But, after a thorough inspection at Heathrow, TSA gave my laptop back, thank goodness!

There is a new requirement to travel in Europe, the Entry and Exit System (EES), used in 29 countries. We were fingerprinted and photographed after we showed our U.S. Passport as we entered Denmark. That process did not take that long—there was no charge that we know of.

About two months ago we signed up and paid for the new required app for U.S. citizens for short visits, tourism, and business in the United Kingdom—that one cost $12.95, called UK ETA.

 

Our Clarion bed looks so comfortable, Soon!

Sleep deprived, but still going strong!

This is where I am right now!

Copenhagen is located on the Øresund Strait, which connects 

the Baltic Sea to the Kattegat and the North Sea

as seen on the 10th floor near our room

Copenhagen in the background

Airport in the foreground

Another view from the 10th Floor

After checking into our hotel at the airport, we were too tired and it was too late to really explore Copenhagen. We will return to the port of Copenhagen on August 19 so we will see what the beautiful city has to offer at that time.  We   did however do what hundreds of Danish people and tourists do, ate dinner at Burger King at the airport.  We walked back to the airport, used their automated machine and paid about 207 krone ($22) for dinner. Wasn’t that creative?

 

So our saga begins—we are all worn out, but tomorrow is another day!

 

TK’s Takes: Coughing and sneezing in the airports and on the planes. No crying children on the flights. One cat, and at least one dog.  A pigeon was enjoying tidbits of food left on the floor at Burger King.