Copenhagen, Denmark

After a cancelled flight and numerous hours aboard airplanes, we finally arrived in Copenhagen. The weather in the city was not quite expected for this time of year, with almost constant raining and a strong wind throughout the whole day. The beauty of the city really unfolded once we arrived into the older districts. We met our tour guide, Lawry, who will be with us for the rest of our journey and took a tour of the city with a man from Copenhagen, named Eigil (good luck pronouncing that right) who taught us about the history of the Danish Royalty and how prevalent they are today. After our exciting tour we went to the National Museum and were able to view artifacts from across the world and throughout a couple thousand years of history. We ate lunch at the museum where they had a buffet in which we “ate like Viking”, this included like pickled herring ribs, and a lot of bread. Although the food was different, most of the students enjoyed their meal and went up for a second and third helping. With full stomachs, we departed the Museum and left for our hotel. With narrow hallways, extremely tiny elevators, and rooms in which our beds were basically touching made this a very different hotel that any of us have ever been too. After a much-needed nap we left for dinner, which was ground beef and had pancakes for dinner. The real fun began after dinner had ended. The entire class decided to go out and walk around the city for a few hours. Walking down the main streets we saw stores and restaurants that only the wealthy could afford. There were streets for driving and streets for walking which were narrow and winding, unlike what we usually see.  There were bike paths next to and between the road and sidewalk. It’s interesting to see because unlike Americans, Danish people actually trust each other and do not lock up their bikes. It is a road race everywhere with them constantly dinging at people for being too slow. Also, canals ran in certain places throughout the city with numerous boats parked on the sides making our walk only more enjoyable. Seeing the city lit up, although much less busy than most of us expected, we decided to go to a couple of bars and get a drink. For us this was probably the most enjoyable part. Throughout the day we began to mingle with each other a little more as the pre trip jitters were starting to wear off and we got slightly more comfortable around new people. At the bar is when, we believe, that students really began to get to know each other better, which hopefully continues to happen! Some students decided to head back earlier than others (they were probably the smart ones because we had to be up by 4:15 am the next morning) while others stayed out and enjoyed the nightlife. To end the night a group of us decided to got a to a bar where they were playing live music (our favorite spot we went to that night). Most of the band s members were from Sweden or Denmark, but their lead singer was from Los Angeles and sang in English, which made it nice for us. They played what they described as “Soul” music and had us captivated the entire time they played. Before leaving we introduced ourselves to him and after giving us a hard time about the Vikings we headed back to the hotel and fell into a comatose type of sleep. Our first day was exhausting, exciting, informative, and just down right fun! Tomorrow, we have a few more flights to look forward to and we will begin our journey in Norway.

Andrew L. & Travis P.