When I visited Denmark in June of 2025, we flew into Denmark, then drove to visit family in Ribe and Vilslev for a few days, and then went back to Copenhagen before flying out the following morning. This article will talk about the things we did on both days I spent in Copenhagen.
The above photo was captured by my future uncle-in-law of a street along Copenhagen's famous canal system. As you can see, the houses and businesses are all brightly colored in real life! Before visiting Denmark, I always associated that style and color of buildings with Amsterdam--which I believe has similar architecture, but now I know Copenhagen has them as well.
One of the things we did while in Copenhagen was a canal tour. According to the pamphlet I picked up, the company we used for our tour has been operating and doing tours since 1904! How cool is that?
Our tour was about an hour long and took us all around the city via the canal system in "eco-friendly" boats that have nets dragging along the bottom to help keep the canals clean. Tours are available in English, Danish, and German (according to our guide who apparently speaks all three languages!) Along the way I learned just how short Copenhagen's bridges are (as you can see in the video above). Another thing I got to see was the Little Mermaid statue, one of Copenhagen's most famous (and "one of the most disappointing" according to our tour guide!) spots. We could only see the backside from our boat, but there she is!
For those wondering, the reason why there is a Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen is because Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid's author, was Danish and lived in Copenhagen at various points in his life. Our tour guide pointed out two of the houses he used to live in along our journey. Our tour guide didn't give her opinion on Disney's Little Mermaid live action controversy, but I know that some people with Danish ancestry were, let's say, not amused by the actress Disney chose to cast. I don't want to say too much because I don't want to cause any offense, but yeah, just figured I would put that out there in case some didn't know--in the original story The Little Mermaid is Danish.
The statue was unveiled in 1913 and is one of the most famous attractions in Copenhagen, but to those who have seen her from the front, they walk away a little uh, disappointed? She's not as pretty as she is in the Disney cartoon, and let's be honest its just a statue after all, its not like she actually does anything other than sit on a rock all day.
Some people have decided to go a bit further with their issues with the statue--whatever those issues may be. According to our tour guide, and Visit Copenhagen, the statue has been vandalized a number of times. She's been doused with paint, lost an arm, and has even lost her head, TWICE, as of 2025. Every time the statue is restored to its original appearance as quickly as possible so she can continue to bemuse audiences that come to see her.
Other sights we spotted on our tour were the Copenhagen Opera House, the Black Diamond Library, and two royal houses--Amalienborg Palace and Christiansborg Palace. Our guide was also really funny, and readily admitted her knowledge of Danish history was a bit muddled in her mind because of how many Danish kings were named either Frederick or Christian. I don't blame her because I get them confused as well!
Another story our canal tour guide related was of this Danish naval ship from the Cold War Era. Today the boat is decommissioned and sitting in Copenhagen today, but one winter several decades back, a Danish sailor "Accidentally" set off a missile that destroyed four houses and damaged another 130 in a civilian neighborhood. It was officially ruled an accident, even though the sailor's ex-mother-in-law happened to own a house in the neighborhood that was hit. According to our tour guide, nobody was hurt or killed in the accident and so today everyone has a good laugh about it--hence the nickname "The Whoopsie."
Surprisingly, the story is true! I didn't doubt our tour guide but I didn't think I would find anything to back it up online. To my surprise, there's an actual Wikipedia article about the event titled "1982 Harpoon Missile Misfire Incident." Apparently the accident took place in September of 1982, and my tour guide was spot on the money with the story!
Wikipedia phrases the incident thusly:
The missile traveled 34 kilometers at low altitude, severing several power lines before eventually striking a group of trees and exploding. The fireball and subsequent shockwave destroyed four nearby unoccupied summer cottages and caused minor damage to a further 130 buildings in the area. There were no injuries.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, the missile system itself was undergoing maintenance at the time and really did fire on accident--the launch key was never activated when the missile went off. While the sailor involved was convicted of several crimes including negligence, most of the charges were dropped after a second investigation. The missile's manufacturer ended up paying the Danish government to help cover the cost of the damage caused by their wayward missile.
I even managed to find an archived newspaper article about the accident, from an Australian newspaper no less! So this incident made headlines around the world.
Unfortunately our guide's quip about the affected neighborhood being where the sailor's ex-mother-in-law lived seems to have been a joke on her end, but the fact that the rest of the story is actually hilarious given that no one was injured.
After leaving our canal tour, we walked to see the Danish Royal Family's main residence in Copenhagen, Amalienborg Palace, which has ceremonial royal guards much like you see in the United Kingdom.
We were able to watch a changing of the guard ceremony, and felt really bad when we noticed one of the guards tripped--but luckily didn't fall!--in the middle of the marching. My future brothers-in-law were joking that the poor guard probably got teased mercilessly by his fellow guards once they were safely inside!
I looked up the palace to get you a bit more background information and apparently we didn't get to see the actual "Changing of the Guard Ceremony" which has much more fanfare and spectacle. What we got to see instead was a smaller version of what basically amounts to the guards on shift change, where one small group was swapped out with another. That would explain why we were the only people there to watch this taking place.
I didn't get many photos, but this is a statue in the courtyard of the royal residence with one of the buildings in the background. None of the royals were in residence when we visited. I did learn something interesting though. Instead of having one large building or castle, the Danish royal family instead occupies multiple houses with a shared courtyard in the center.
According to Visit Copenhagen, the four identical houses on the property are divided thusly:
Amalienborg is composed of four architecturally identical buildings. These are Christian VII's Palace (also known as Moltke's Palace, used as a guest residence), Frederik VIII's Palace (also known as Brockdorff's Palace, home of His Majesty King Frederik X, Her Majesty Queen Mary, and their children), Christian IX's Palace (also known as Schack's Palace, home of Queen Margrethe II) and Christian VIII's Palace (also known as Levetzau's Palace, used as a guest palace for Prince Joachim and Princess Benedikte).
Please keep in mind that the information in blue was accurate as of 2025 and will change in the future along with the royal family's future.
After looking up palace online, I found out that this is a statue from 1768 of King Frederik V. Also included in the palace square is a museum (located in the Lezetzau's Palace). Unfortunately the museum was already closed for the day by the time I got to the square. The museum recounts Danish royal history and its ties to other branches of European royal families. The modern palace was built on the site of an existing palace that burned down in 1689, with the new one being completed in 1750. The royal family, however, did not move into the palace until 1794 after the old palace at Christianborg burned down.
Amalienborg Palace was caught up in World War II, with an actual firefight between Danish and German soldiers taking place in the square. Today, the area is a major tourist attraction and parts are open to the public, including the aforementioned museum.
On our last night in Copenhagen, we visited one of the oldest still-operating amusement parks in the world, Tivoli Gardens, which opened in 1843. Apparently the oldest amusement park in the world is located elsewhere in Denmark, but Tivoli also claims to have the world's oldest wooden rollercoaster (operating since 1914 according to the park's website!), which I got to ride on. It was only a little sketchy but also really cool. One highlight of the ride is that it is still operated with manual brakes. That's right--a ride operator goes onto the ride cars with you and manually operates the brakes by pulling on a series of levers! One source I found said that The Rollercoaster in Tivoli is one of only seven such rollercoasters in the world today.
For my Tivoli souvenir, I got this hat that I absolutely love. It was FREEZING cold and raining when we were there (at least in my thoroughly Arizonan opinion) so I figured a warm and fuzzy hat was an appropriate souvenir to buy.
When we visited Tivoli, I had Tokyo Disney still fresh in my mind, and I'll be honest--I liked Tivoli better. Tokyo Disneyland was really fun, but after our disastrous day at Tokyo DisneySea, the whole experience has a dark cloud in my mind. Despite the rain at Tivoli, it was really fun!
I spent the majority of our time at Tivoli (which was only a few hours) with my fiancé. During our time there we went on quite a few rides, including:
The Monsoon, The Camel Trail, The Vintage Cars, The Galley Ships, The Mine, The Milky Way Express, The Roller Coaster, The Flying Trunk, and my fiancé tried the Daemon Coaster. We also hit the Aquarium which was really cool as well!
The oldest roller coaster in the world, that I mentioned above, is literally just called "The Roller Coaster." My three favorite rides are all tied in my mind: The Galley Ships, The Flying Trunk, and The Monsoon.
The Galley Ships and The Flying Trunk (pictured above) are both kids attractions but don't let that stop you! The Flying Trunk takes you through a series of scenes from various Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales. It has also been updated in the past few years (according to my fiancé who last visited the park in 2022), and now includes English audio alongside the original Danish. The Flying Trunk is especially heartfelt to the park given that A) as previously mentioned Hans Christian Andersen was Danish himself, and B) that according to the park's website Hans was a visitor the park on opening day in 1843.
The Galley Ships puts you on a two-seater pirate ship alongside several other passengers in other boats. The boats will be whipped up and down while also circling around, with fog, music, and other dancing pirate imagery. The boats seem to go faster and faster and it was REALLY FUN. My fiancé had never done that ride before so it was extra special that we both got to experience it together for the first time.
The Monsoon is for bigger kids (aka adults). On The Monsoon, riders are locked into the same kind of restraint you see on higher-stakes roller coasters, with four people in a line and another four directly across from where you sit. There are a couple groups of eight so it fits quite a few people. Riders are slowly lifted further and further into the air while swinging back and forth, with water jets coming up underneath you. Its really fun and we were riding it in the rain so it was even more wet and cold than normal!
The reason why I didn't go on the Daemon rollercoaster is because I had a complete meltdown/panic-attack on California Adventure's IncrediCoaster last year, and so I decided I would rather keep my feet on the ground this time around. Good thing to, because my fiancé told me he had to take his glasses off before riding. I would have been completely blind! No thanks!
This is footage from the ride "The Vintage Cars", where if you are an adult only one person can fit per car so I took a video of my fiancé up ahead of me!
I did NOT go on the ride shown in this video, but thought it was another fun clip to include (featuring my future cousin-in-law at the end!).
Some other fun and interesting history about the park...according to Tivoli's website, the oldest building in the park today was built in 1874!
When the park first opened in 1843, it existed outside the walls of Copenhagen, but is now smack in the middle of the city, which literally grew up around the park.
The first Ferris wheel in the park was steam operated and opened in 1884--as of 2025 the park is on its third iteration of the attraction (but is no longer steam powered)!
According to one source, Tivoli is not just beloved in Denmark and by visitors to Copenhagen--evidently Walt Disney himself visited Tivoli several times before and soon after Disneyland Anaheim opened (in 1955), using Tivoli as inspiration for his own "Happiest Place on Earth".
Another major draw to Tivoli, besides the rides, are the gardens themselves. I didn't have as much time to look through them as I would have liked, but all throughout the park there are beautiful blooming flowers of all kinds. I saw more hydrangea and dahlias than anything else while I was there, but we even saw some wild peacocks making their way throughout the park as well. There is even a large chicken coop in the center of the park!
In case you want to see the gardens but are not a fan of attractions, you're in luck! Visitors to Tivoli have a multitude of options when entering the park. The basic entrance fee gets you inside the gate, where you can wander around, visit the gardens and shops, and eat at a variety of restaurants or the food hall. More expensive passes can also be purchased, which allow you to ride the various rides in the park. Visitors also have the option to buy the basic pass at the gate and then purchase individual passes per ride once inside as well. One thing I found particularly interesting about our ride passes (which allowed us on every attraction open while we were there), was a wristband with an RFID chip inside, which allowed us to scan the entrance point and get on every ride. I've never had a pass like that before so I found it very cool.
I hope you enjoyed my short tour of some of Copenhagen's sites. One day I hope to be able to spend more time in Copenhagen and other parts of the country to see and learn more about it, but as you will see in my next few posts about Denmark, I spent most of my time there visiting with my future-family-in-law, and I consider that time very well spent. Thanks for reading!
Sources:
Copenhagen Canal Tour and Little Mermaid Statue
https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/planning/classic-canal-tour-gdk410731
https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/planning/little-mermaid-gdk586951
The Whoopsie Incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Harpoon_missile_misfire_incident
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/116468776
Amalienborg Palace
https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/planning/amalienborg-palace-gdk492887
https://denkongeligesamling.dk/en/amalienborg-museum/
Tivoli Gardens
https://www.tivoli.dk/en/about-tivoli
https://www.insightvacations.com/blog/tivoli-gardens-copenhagen/
https://www.napha.org/Resources/Facts-Figures/Worlds-Oldest-Operating-Parks
https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/planning/tivoli-gardens-gdk424504