Quick wake up, I know the bed is nice but Copenhagen is calling us! We drag the kdis to breakfast and off to the pier before they realise anything has happened. These beds! It's 3 minutes to The Little Mermaid. The Christian in Hans Christian Anderson is anchored in some deep history. We're standing on land that has been occupied for over 6000 years, the home of the longest running monarchy, Australia's only real royalty and most importantly of all, given this is a Disney cruise, the actual Happiest Place on Earth.

I won't pretend to know the history - but every worthy monarch I heard about today was named Frederick of Christian. This is also the home of the Bluetooth that lent his name the Ericsson Bluetooth we all rely on today. His role was to bond the disparate villages into Denmark, and so the sense in lending his name to a technology of unified communication. Anyway, we're on to a canal cruise and off down the harbour quick smart.

As a Sydney sider the two Utzon observations are: The Copenhagen opera house isn't worth of an Utzon being involved, it's impressive, but not.. you know. And the other Utzon site we saw (from his son Kim) was pretty bland, but better than what I could manage. We' proceed along past the Royal dock, Gab is convinced she's seen Mary in photos here. On to (very) old Royal Brewery from over a thousand years ago. In past the current Parliament house and you start to notice something pretty unique in Europe. Every significant European city we've been to either bears it's scars from the first half of the 20th Century, or had to be rebuilt afterwards. But not in Copenhagen, we walk past half millennia old facades and don't' even realise.

With that depth of history and the worlds oldest surviving Monarchy to entertain you can understand why their millennia long generational brinksmanship has led to a city with a palace at every corner. They literally don't know what to do with them all. We hop off the canal tour at Strøget. I read somewhere it's Europe's longest shopping street, but la Rambla must be longer. It's full of everything you can buy in every other city on earth, note to self - no need to return. It's saving grace is ending at the foot steps of Tivoli Gardens and the impressive town hall.

Such an old and heavily multicultural city struggled hid it's own culture away. Burgers, Hot Dogs, dumplings, Kebabs, Dim Sim and Indo fare was everywhere but finding smørrebrød was impossible. We hopped a taxa to Nyhavn but on a whim asked the driver if he new where Noma was? He did! Boom we dropped in on the doorstep of Noma for a selfie in front of the former first and now second best restaurant on earth! He then took us on to Nyhavn and Cap Horn for some smørrebrød, we even had the Herring one.

After lunch we walked a little further along Nyhavn to the draw bridge which was up to let some sailboats through - the kids were in awe, first time they've seen one. But if a drawbridge is impressive, it pales compared to the softserve mountain Fid acquired, he's been looking forward to Copenhagen icecream for a year and wasn't disappointed. From the bridge we headed back towards the Amalienborg Palace, a configuration of four replica building' now used interchangeably by the queen and prince families of Denmark (or as they say Danmark) for their regal quarters.

We harassed some of the royal guard before deciding to just walk the side of the harbour back to the Magic. Along the way passed the Royal cast collection - what a fantastic idea, send people out to travel the world and make casts of everything interesting to send back home and avert the need for travel! No good for me of course, but I can see the appeal. Along from the Royal cast library is the international HQ of Maersk - culturally I think it adds to the vista of the harbour, corporately it's a surprisingly small building given their apparent importance to the world.

Along the harbour and the embattlement we're suddenly in front of the Little Mermaid again and aware of just how small this city also is. Of course you can head out and discover it goes for miles but for us and our obsession with the old town it's was the perfect size. The other thing to note is that these guys have done very well to keep the Swede's at bay for the last 300 years, I can understand why all of them want to be Norway. 

We're back on board in the nick of time, all fell asleep for an hour before heading up to dinner. I got all inspired after the day and decided to try to track down an Berlin tour for tomorrow, but it's all too little too late - we're set for a north German health resort experience tomorrow and I'm probably alright with that.