This is the evening of my 2nd day in Copenhagen. Just now, at 10:00pm I called Bill in Santa Rosa: he had just come in from lunch and I'm about to turn into bed for the night. Fascinating!
Yesterday we roda a boat for a tour of Copenhagan via the harbor and canals. We started in a neighborhood where Hans Cristian Anderson lived. Our guide says it used to be a rather rowdy neightorhood of drunken sailors and loose women. Now it's beautiful with interesting, idiosyncratic buildings. One of them said 1681 for it's founding year. Wow The age of the buildings and the quirky, artistic touches make this whole area feel very alive and very human scale. The place seems much more human-focussed than machine-focussed like many American environments.
We journey from our hotel to the meeting room we use via a pedestrian only steet. This is a faulous area. Lots of people on foot, many on bikes, with strollers. There is a big national proram on right now to get the Danish population up, and, indeed, we see lots of pregnant women. We all keep appreciating the beauty of the people.Almost everyone has a sense os sttyle about them. Not as in "following the styles" ut rather each person finding some interestiing way to be themselves. Dressed up women on bicycles. Crazy leggings with unexpected skirts. Wild shoes. Classy hair. Lots of fun. Three of us have daughters in 1st or 2nd years in college and we keep saying how much we wish they were here to see this with us.
Our hosts are taking fabulous care of us. First of all, the training is excellent and liively. Then they provide Danish pastry. Today's specialitis was "potato cake" — like al litle eclair with custard, marzipan, cocoa sprinkld over the top ... and the whole thing tastes scrumptious and lools like a potato.
We saw the famous Little Mermaid statue from the water. The rather small statue was surrounded when we saw it by a multitiude of Japanese visitors taking pictures of it from on the land So, what we have pictures of is the mermaid's back and the fronts of several dozen tourists with cameras.
We've had dazzling blue skies for the last mornings, too. All of us are having such a great time. And now, i really am going off to bed. I'll disconnect my phone, so feel free to call! Much love, Cynthia
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