Another uncomfortable night of sleep meant another relatively early start for the day. We were having breakfast before 08:00, and we were ready to head out about an hour after that.

We started walking in the direction of the Round Tower, a 17th century tower that was commissioned by Christian IV of Denmark. Whilst it’s attached to the Trinity church, its purpose was as an observatory due to the importance of navigating using the stars when Europe was in its colonisation era.

Our route to get there skimmed the edge of Kastellet, and went past more of the orange terraced houses we’d seen previously. They were commissioned by Christian IV for the families of military men who would be in service of their navy for up to twenty years. A little further along from them we walked through the King's Garden, adjacent to Rosenborg Castle. This was somewhere we’d visit properly tomorrow so we didn’t spend that much time there.

Eventually we made it to the Round Tower, and joined the queue to go up. There’s a sign saying that you shouldn’t usually need to wait more than twenty minutes; there’s a maximum number of people allowed at any time. It’s then 40 DKK per person, and this grants access to the library exhibitions too. If you've not made it to the dome of the Marble Church, then this is one of the highest points you can reach within the city. It's possible to get a good view from the Church of Our Saviour in Christiana as well, but that one may not be as comfortable for those not so good with heights.

White plastered walls, and a winding ramp made from bricks make this feel like a tunnel that takes you almost to the top of this tower. Part way up there’s a door for the library, which we spent some time looking at the different physics experiments that they’re demonstrating such as the famous double slit experiment. Slightly further around there’s a door for a room above that which would have been the location of the church bells previously.

When the winding path ends, there's a room with some overhead lights: one red, one green, and a timer. Whilst it's red you need to wait at the bottom of some wooden steps, and then as soon as it goes green you're encouraged to ascend as quickly as possible out onto the roof of the tower.

The roof of the Round Tower is an open space with a high fence for safety. It wasn't that busy up there, and surprisingly it wasn't too windy either. From the root we could see all over Copenhagen, including buildings we could recognise as being close to where we were staying. In another direction we could see the famous Øresund Bridge, and Sweden.

There are some more stairs you can climb, and these take you up into the oldest functioning observatory in Europe. This area was closed, but from where we could go up to we could see the large refracting telescope. What's there now is not the original, and only dates back to 1929.

Once we were back at the bottom, we stopped by the Netto store where we got some snacks to keep us going. I got a kanelstykke, and a kærnemælkshorn. I ate the latter pretty much straight away, and found it to be a raspberry jam-filled pasty. The latter I had about an hour later, after visiting the nearby LEGO store, and this was a pastry with plenty of cinnamon sauce.

This was our second international LEGO Store to get ‘passport’ stamps for, and we spent a fair bit of time there. Carmen got some mini figure bits to represent her colleagues, and I'd considered getting some bricks to use for displaying my D&D Collectible Mini Figures, but decided Billund would be the better place to get them from. It is the home of LEGO after all. The idea was inspired by the display they had here though. We noticed there were quite a few sets in there we’d not seen for some time.

I navigated us to Christiansborg Palace next - finding the entrance to this was not that obvious. I thought the front of the building might have an obvious tourist entrance with signs, and maybe a queue of people waiting to go inside. Other than some people doing some restoration work on one of the arches, the place seemed to be pretty deserted. My first thought was that I'd made a mistake, and this wasn't the building I thought it was. I've had Google lead me to places other than where I intended on being before.

I peered through one archway to take a photograph and then re-joined Carmen as she was looking at a map. Even that wasn't amazingly helpful without really knowing what it was we were looking for. We walked through another archway, and I noticed a sign mentioning a tower, and thought maybe we were on the right track. The map seemed to suggest there were some ruins in the corner of the courtyard, but I couldn't see any; although I did see a sign for them. When I saw someone come out of a door from the bottom of some steps there I thought it'd be worth a try - perhaps if there was someone checking tickets there they could tell us where to go for the main tourist entrance.

There was a counter in the room at the bottom of the stairs, and from there you can either buy tickets for the individual parts of the palace, or get a combined one for 195 DKK per person. If we’d bought individual tickets it would have been around 355 DKK, but what we realised later was the best part of the tour was the Royal Reception Rooms which are 125 DKK by themselves. For an extra 70 DKK it seemed like an obvious choice to get the combined ticket. Each of the areas of the palace you can visit actually has a counter like this.

The ruins under the palace are of the castle that stood on this spot before the palace was built. The media around the area describes how the castle was destroyed, and a palace built instead. That palace was however burnt down in 1794 so had to be rebuilt. That one burnt down too in 1884, and so the one that stands there today was finished in 1928. It’s now the seat of the Danish parliament, the government, and the courts - the only building in the world to house all three branches of government. Some of the rooms are also used by the monarchy whose history has strong ties to the United Kingdom through their marriages to Anglo-Saxons, and occasional ruling of England. The current, Frederik X, had only become King of Denmark earlier this year after his mother abdicated.

The Royal Reception rooms was the area we visited next, but before we could explore we had to put plastic covers over our shoes so that the floors would be protected. We then walked up the Queen’s Staircase into the Alexander Hall. This was the first of many rooms that included a dining room, a library, and even a throne room. The end of this tour then takes you down the King’s Staircase into the Hall of Giants, and the gift shop.

Of the areas we could visit, the Royal Kitchen was the smallest of these. There’s a large area with copper pans, and ovens, and then a smaller room which is used for preparing desserts. The final room looked to be an office for the person in charge of the kitchen staff.

The final part of our ticket was the Royal Stables, which you access from the side of the palace that faces the City Hall and Tivoli. The first part of this is a small room containing some stuffed horses, and old saddles. It seemed at first that might be all there was, but you could go further into the stables where they had a number of live horses, and then a Royal carriage museum. A lot of the carriages were pretty similar, and seemed like there are far more than they could ever need. One of the really big ones is designed to be pulled by multiple rows of horses and looked like you’d need a decent ladder to get inside. Another one was gold, and seemed to be the most recent of the ones on show - it was one that has been used in recent times.

Outside, in front of the stable entrance, is a sandy area that I imagine they would use for the horses at some point. We could see the rides of Tivoli from where we were, so navigating there was easy enough. We recognised this area from the half marathon route, but our memory of what was where was not great. We passed the City Hall Square, and found our way to the Lego Store outside Tivoli. This one was a lot smaller, but it was a source for more stamps for our LEGO passports.

This didn’t take long, and we were soon on the move again, first to the City Hall Square to photograph that, and then on to Restaurant Karla which we’d passed by not that long before. It may have been the middle of the afternoon now, but we’d been snacking, so a late lunch was not a problem. I had a Smørrebrød containing Frikadeller with Rugbrød and red lettuce. It was a great way of trying different aspects of the local cuisine at the same time. This with a soft drink cost around 150 DKK per person.

On our way back, Carmen decided she wanted to try some Æblekage - a type of apple cake they have here. The only place we could find with it on their menu at this time of year was Vaffelbageren in Nyhavn, so we walked along the canal there. When we got there though, we found they no longer have it on their menu despite the (obviously out-of-date) photo we’d seen online. Instead, I had a dulce de leche-flavoured ice cream with marshmallow cream on top.

We sat and ate that with a view of the opera house, and saw someone pass by that looked like they were either coming from a production of Wicked, or was heading to one.

Our journey back to the apartment continued on through the Amalienborg Palace gardens, and then the courtyard of the palace that is guarded by Danish Royal Guards. We walked around the outside of Kastellet one more time, and saw the sunset from the apartment. The first day of proper sightseeing was over.