Hello from Copenhagen! It is a beautful city, despite the rocky introduction we had to it.

The cruise was pretty cool, up until the end. We took several photos (of course) and explored the boat and visited the duty-free. We decided not to partake of any of their overpriced meals and had instead bought snacks in Oslo to bring aboard. We thought for a moment we might experience seasickness (we had once, long ago on Lake Michigan, and hope to never have it again) with the rocking of the boat, but we got used to it and both slept really well. Before we disembarked, Chad asked at guest services for a map of Copenhagen and where we'd be docking, and that is where DFDS (the cruise line) went wrong - the woman circled a part on the port that really did not correspond with where we were and failed to mention that the cruise had a free shuttle to city center. By the time we realized we weren't where we thought we were and went back and saw the shuttle stop, the last one had left. So we had to walk a few kilometers to our hostel. But it wasn't too bad a walk and we got to see some neat parts of the city that we wouldn't have otherwise.

Since it was morning (11-ish) our room wasn't ready, but our hostel has a luggage storage where we dropped our stuff and headed out to Rosenborg Castle, just around the corner. It was a very cool castle, built by Denmark's most famous king, Christian IV, who ruled in the 17th century. Then we went to lunch nearby at a pretty nice restaurant called Orangeliet that is known for their smorbrod, or small open-faced sandwiches, which are the local specialty. We each ordered one and split both - one with duck with horseradish and lingenberry jam and one with shrimp, egg, fresh thyme and lemon mayo. They were delicious.

We were then able to check into our hostel, which is a fairly new establishment and our first hostel experience. Our room is more of private twin room, with en suite, rather than the traditional hostel dorms, but they have those here too and lots of younger people of all nationalities around. It is a big place, sleeping hundreds of people. But it was a bit cheaper than a real hotel, clean, accommodating and is suiting us just fine.

This evening we explored the main parts of the central city. The town is all decked out for Christmas and absolutely magical. We visited two jule markts (Christmas markets) and tried the local specialty, glogg, a hot spiced wine at each. The second came with a commemorative mug for 15-kroner, which I will keep. We had dinner from the polse (sausage) stand and dessert from a mobile crepe stand attached to a bike. There are bicycles everywhere here.

We have our game plan set for tomorrow, our only full day in Copenhagen, and it includes a visit to the famous The Little Mermaid statue (it's the hometown of Hans Christian Anderson), pictured above from the blog's photo library since Chad fell asleep tonight before uploading our own photos. So we'll have lots of photos to share tomorrow!