Cycling Copenhagen to Berlin: Tivoli Gardens and more of Copenhagen

Another delicious breakfast buffet at the hotel. Don and Jane arrived from their cruise in Russia as we were eating and came and put their faces in the window next to us. It will be fun to be with them once again on a trip. It's been a couple of years. We are going to the Tivoli Gardens but it doesn't open until 11:00 so we decide to do another route, the Carlsberg route, of the Hop On Hop Off bus. We are seeing lots of different parts of the city.

Tivoli Gardens is one of the first amusement parks beeing in existence since 1852. Walt Disney used Tivoli Gardens for inspiration for Disneyland. It's a small, charming park right in the middle of the city with beautiful gardens providing the backdrop for the rides and many restaurants in the park. There are also concerts and performances of many types here. The buildings are brightly painted and fanciful in nature. The weather is overcast and a pleasant temperature for walking around. We have lunch at a hamburger place. Hamburgers were delicious! Hamburgers and fries are a big thing now in Europe. There are many hamburger places and they appear on the menus of many restaurants.

After lunch we do the final route of our Hop On Hop Off bus which includes Christiania. Christiania is a unique place for alternative living styles including the use of drugs. It is self governing - sort of. Until recently, it was a freewheeling place where just about anything goes. It has always been controversial and recent years have seen more regulation and crack down on use of hard drugs. We have made good use of our Hop On tickets!

We had to wait 40minutes for,the bus so we went across the street to the big train station where we could sit down at a Starbucks. The man at the counter spoke perfect English with a British accent but he asked if he could ask me a question. He said when a foreign gentleman comes to the counter, he calls him "sir." He wondered what the proper address would be for a woman - "ma'am" or "miss?" I said "miss" if the woman appears to be 40 or younger, "ma'am" if older. Did I tell him the right thing?

At dinner, we meet members of our group who have arrived - Linda and Chas, Don and Jane, Frank and Jeannie, and of course Kathy and John and Dave and me. We go to a brewery whose name I don't remember. It was a lot of fun, like a reunion seeing all these people who have become friends and with whom we've shared many wonderful experiences.

We get our bikes tomorrow and the trip begins!