Squuuurl!

I just saw a squirrel! After a beautiful meal of Dutch imported white asparagus with Danish ham, potatoes and eggs,  and the lovely company of our British relatives, Mum and I went for a little stroll to the nearby lake, which had some very large impressive houses on its banks.

Then, on the way back, we saw a squirrel cross the road and run up a tree, and then it just sat there looking pretty, so we looked at it for a while, while it looked at us for a while. Of course, Mum took quite a few pictures of it. 

After a day in down town Copenhagen, I have to say that the squirrel was the most exciting thing I've seen today. I'm just not really a city tripper. I like cities better when I know them. I do not like being a tourist. It was quite devastating being at Amalienborg Palace this morning with my mother to see the changing of the guards, as she was just being a complete tourist with her camera, and the crowd of other snap-happy tourists I just did not want to be a part of. There is something about the cluelessness and obviousness of tourist that makes me cringe. I don't know why. People are curious, there is nothing wrong with being ignorant about places you haven't been before, but I don't like being ignorant.

But anyway, the changing of the guard was interesting enough, but it isn't something I would spend half an hour watching. I did it anyway, though. The guards all looked like they were barely out of high school. The most amusing thing about the whole charade were actually the policemen who were controlling the crowds, they were all real comedians, one by one. The one closest to me would ask everyone where they were from and then when he met some French people he said: 'Oh, you should stick around, because on Fridays we always execute some French people to entertain the crowds. Pity you weren't here yesterday, Thursdays we do the Americans.'

After the changing of the guards we walked to famous, touristy, yet pretty Nyhavn, and got rained on. I had consulted a Dutch website about the weather which said it was going to be 17.5 degrees and sunny. But it wasn't either of those...we decided to grab some lunch at Magasin du Nord (Danish version of Myers/Bijenkorf) on the top floor, which was really nice. We had some traditional Smørrenbrød, pumpernickel with local toppings, quite tasty.

After that we took a boat tour, saw the statue of the little mermaid, who has just returned from China's World Exhibition. She went there stone and all, sat in a little basin of actual water from the Copenhagen harbour, and people stood in queues for 8 hours to see her. In her absence they had erected a screen here, displaying her live in China. Well, live, obviously she wasn't actually moving much, but I guess the crowds were, or something. She's also lost her head two times in her life, and to prevent that from happening again, her third head is filled with concrete. Wonder if she ever gets headaches.

We had a nice coffee when we got back, and decided that five hours was enough to spend in Copenhagen, so we trained it home. We'd done a lot of walking and were quite tired. I have to say I was quite pleased to go back to my cousin's place, as like I said, I'm just not really into cities. I prefer cruising the countryside. Which is what we're doing today! Hopefully, if the weather is nice enough...