What a Coincidence

I began my trip to Europe on Tuesday, March 30th, but that was not the beginning of my vacation. I was on a business trip! Quite coincidentally (really!), I had to be in Vienna for a two-day argument as part of an insurance arbitration proceeding. This was a double coincidence because (i) the argument was scheduled to immediately precede the date I had planned to travel to Copenhagen originally and so it meshed perfectly from a scheduling standpoint and (ii) the argument was scheduled to take place in Vienna which was one of the cities Katherine and I had planned to visit. I may never be in Vienna again in my life, but for this one moment in time, I had two reasons to be there in the same week!

And so, I spent Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in Vienna on business, and then flew to Copenhagen on Friday evening (April 2nd). My trip to the airport was uneventful, and I had no difficulty getting ticketed and finding the gate. The plane took off on time and landed in Copenhagen on time, and, by about 7:45 p.m., I was hugging Katherine outside the baggage claim area. We found each other very easily. IT WAS SO GREAT TO SEE HER! And it was so nice to have her as my own personal tour guide in this city.

One of the first benefits of Katherine's knowing the city is that we were able to take public transportation into the city. We took the train. We had to change to a second train at one point, but it all worked out very well. And it was fast. Upon arriving at the train station in the city, we walked a bit to our hotel, and that allowed Katherine to give me a very basic orientation to the city.

We stayed at the Hotel Danmark. It was quite nice and very conveniently located in the center of town -- very near the City Hall. After dropping off our luggage at the hotel, we walked through the central town square, past the City Hall, and found a restaurant near the Tivoli amusement park (unfortunately not open for the 2010 season until mid-April) for a late dinner. The photos here are of the City Hall.

Back at the hotel, we mapped out our plan of attack for the next day. Basically, we had one day to see the entire city. We had a very ambitious agenda and I hoped very much to get to everything on our list.