All that walking yesterday took its toll. We didn’t wake up until about 10am. Instead of going out in the morning, we decided to tackle the Munich problem. Even though it’s September, Oktoberfest is going on in Munich. This is unfortunate for us, as there are no affordable hotel rooms left in the city. Thus, we’ve decided to skip Munich and spend a few extra days recovering in Berlin instead.

After reworking our train and hotel plans, we headed out to see a few more Paris landmarks. We took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe and walked to the Opera House. We also hoped to take a night bus tour of Paris, but unfortunately we arrived at the ticket office too late and were unable to get a ticket. Alas, maybe next time…

According to the Fitbit, we walked over 30,000 steps today! We started the day with a sweet crepe and a walking tour of Montmarte. Our guide Hanna led an entertaining tour around the district, pointing out former houses of various artists, actors, and other famous residents as well as landmarks like the Moulin Rouge. According to some, Sacre Coeur has the best view in all of Paris. I’m not qualified to evaluate that claim, but it is without a doubt an amazing view of the city.

Not satisfied with one walking tour, we then embarked on Rick Steves’s self-guided walking tour of Notre Dame cathedral and the surrounding area. We were both pretty tired at this point, but despite that, we decided to run around the Louvre museum before it closed. We managed to speed walk through three wings of the museum in about an hour. After leaving the Louvre, we headed to the Eiffel Tower. After a late dinner, we walked up the hill to our apartment, totally exhausted.

We had a few hours in the morning to continue touring Amsterdam before we had to catch our train to Paris. We headed over to Rembrandt House museum, which as the name suggests, was a house where Rembrandt van Rijn once lived. The museum comes with a free audio tour and the layout of the museum was thoughtfully designed. It’s definitely worth a visit if you happen to be in the northeastern section of central Amsterdam.

A few hours later we arrived in Paris. We rode the metro and then climbed many steep, stone roads to our vacation rental in Montmartre. Apparently, Picasso once lived in this building, although it doesn’t seem like it was for any appreciable amount of time.

We decided that running as fast as we can between museums isn’t our style. Thus, we cut the number of museums visited today to only three. Using Amsterdam’s excellent tram system, we navigated our way to the Van Gogh museum. The museum didn’t have as many works as I was expecting (as it is under construction), but it did as excellent job at telling the story of Van Gogh’s lifelong battle with mental illness. After that, we headed to the nearby Rijks museum, but declined to enter because it is undergoing a major multi-year renovation. Finally, we headed to Anne Frank’s House, which not only tells a tragic story, but also does an excellent job at subtly forcing museum goers to keep moving along to improve the flow of traffic through the exhibits.

In the evening, we picked up a giant bag of Amsterdam-style french fries with mayonnaise on top (as is their custom), which Valerie thoroughly enjoyed. Fries in hand, we took an evening stroll through the famous red light district, which at that time had many more families strolling about its streets than prostitutes in windows.

The train ride from Copenhagen to Amsterdam takes about 15 hours.  We reserved a two-person sleeper car for the journey.  One interesting fact about this train is that not all the cars go to the same destination.  Throughout the night, at various intermediary stations, certain cars were detached, trains were rearranged, and by the end of the journey, only the first two cars of the train we departed with were still then upon arrival.

As we got off the ferry from Oslo, we saw a free shuttle bus departing for downtown Copenhagen. Without hesitation, we boarded this bus only to realize that (1) the bus was not heading in the desired direction and that (2) our hotel was only a few hundred meters from the ferry terminal. We quickly disembarked and then hopped on a Hop-On Hop-Off bus, which then proceeded to do an entire loop of downtown Copenhagen before we realized that it wouldn’t take us any closer to the hotel than when we boarded. (Note to anyone considering CitySightseeing’s HOHO bus in Copenhagen: if you can walk at least half a mile, consider skipping the HOHO bus and taking the trains or city buses.) Eventually we made it to Adina Apartment Hotel (which was quite nice) and tried to figure out what to do during our stay.

In his book “Europe through the Back Door”, European travel expert Rick Steves mentions that a great way to travel between continental Europe and Scandinavia is via Copenhagen. Unfortunately, when writing the book, he neglected to mention what travellers should do during their stay in Copenhagen. After a quick perusal of TripAdvisor, we decided to go to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Using his beer empire fortune, Carl (of Ny Carlsberg fame) purchased a great deal of sculptures and soon realized that he needed a place to put them. Naturally, the answer was to build a giant glyptotek in the middle of Copenhagen. And it’s pretty awesome. If you’re ever in Copenhagen, it’s worth an hour or two of your time.

The glyptotek happens to be right next to Tivoli, so we took a nighttime stroll through the amusement park (formerly gardens) after eating some dinner. We didn’t realize it until too late, but Tivoli has a good number of restaurants and shows inside of its gates. Valerie remarked on how similar it is to Downtown Disney, except that it costs money to get in.