Fifty up but one more to do. Denmark and Copenhagen Thursday 22 September

I have for a while thought that there are 50 sovereign states in Europe and after visiting Denmark I thought that I would have completed my European oddesey.  Only while researching this trip did I discover that Kazakhstan is considered part of Europe. It is the only European country that you need to travel through, or fly over Russia,  to reach. Another challenge then.
Meanwhile back to the delights of Denmark and a little historical and geographical background.
Denmark is the southernmost and smallest of the Nordic states. It consists of a peninsula (Jutland) and an archipelago of 443 named islands including Zealand and Funen. Also included are the two autonomous constituent countries of Greenland (50 times the size of Denmark) and Faroe Islands (one 30th the size of Denmark). Sort of little and large relations. The 5 and a half million Danes are ruled by a parliamentary democracy and the Head of State is Queen Margrethe II.
The country is up there with the other Scandinavian states with its standard of living. It ranks very highly in world indeses for education, health care, prosperity and civil liberties. It has the world's highest level of social mobility and the lowest level of perceived corruption. The downside of all this is that it has one of the world's highest levels of personal income tax along with one of the highest levels of per capita income.
We left about half an hour later than planned so we were now a little tight on time but should still be fine........  until the expected traffic delays on the A47 at Peterborough but we avoided these by cutting through Eye.......  until we realised that everyone else had the same plan. By the time we got onto the A1 our arrival time gave us less than an hour to park, clear security and get to the gate which is a trek of, seemingly many a mile at Luton. The mid-term car parking that we had booked into contained about 5000 cars and 1 free space so that we had to drive around to find the needle in the car stack. Suffice it to say that we reached the departure gate at least 5 minutes before it was closed.
The flight was about one and a half hours and easy, as was entry into Denmark. We bought 2 tourist travel cards that last for 72 hours and cost £20 each. With these we travelled one stop down the line to Tamby where our hotel is. In the picture below you can see the station, a Danish bike (looks Dutch to me), Helen and a local postbox.

Only another 2 stops down and you arrive at Copenhagen Central Station. The architecture is interesting as it it was built to minic a gothic cathedral with germanic schloss undertones to the exterior. Note especially the "oak hammer beam" roof. How about the steam train weather vane?

Right opposite the Central Station is the one place most people associate with Copenhagen, the Tivoli Gardens. The other, of course is the disappointing small Little Mermaid but I suppose that the clue is in the name. We spent the rest of the evening in the gardens, a magical mystery land opened in 1843. It had 4.7 million visitors in 2015 which made it the second most visited theme park in the world. It has everything from white knuckle rides,  concerts, fairground stalls and bars and restaurants. Exciting by day but wonderful by night with twinkling fairy lights and culminating in a laser lightshow climax. I went on  the scariest ride I have experienced whizzing round on the end of a huge arm in a tiny open plane which twisted round whilst looping the loop at 100 kph. We also watched the comedy ballet. Have a look at some pictures. 

After that lot it was time to catch the train back to the hotel for a good night's sleep.