København – September 2003

On our second day touring Copenhagen we decided to walk from Ellen and Søren’s’s apartment to the Danish Royal Residence of Amalienborg and then on to wherever we might go.

That made for a little bit of a walk.

Fortunately we got a chance to use some of Copenhagen’s ‘City Bikes’. The city of Copenhagen operates a generous scheme, called Bycykler (City Bikes), by which anyone can borrow a bicycle for free.

Motivated in part by a desire to limit motor-vehicle traffic in the city center, private businesses and the city council sponsor approximately 2000 bikes for the Bycykler program. The bikes can be found at hundreds of bike racks scattered throughout the city. If you want to use a bike you must deposit a 20kr coin into a locking mechanism attached to the bike. When you are done, you can lock the bike to any Bycykler rack and get your coin back.

We took the tour at Amalienborg, stopped for a hot dog and fed the ducks, visited the Little Mermaid, and explored Christiania.