Day 3 Copenhagen

Ah so day 3 begins. Still lovely and sunny but with a brisk icy wind that cuts through to your bones. So with that in mind we started our day in the National Museum. We saw Vikings and their treasures, some amazing old alters, crosses, jewellery, statues and paintings from pre the 13th century (that stuff is OLD) learnt all about the history of the Danish from the 1600s-2000 (for instance in the 1700s the average age of marriage for a woman was 27 and they usually had only 4 kids!). Then came the best exhibit; Toys! Gorgeous teddies from the 1900s (Gran Crook would've smuggled them out in her handbag!), wind up toys from the 60s and the absolute best bit was a magnificent collection of doll houses! All shapes and sizes from different eras and mounted in a special display so you walk around the back of them and see inside and they were all finished, some with teeny tiny irons, oven mitts, sewing machines or a loaf of bread on the table. Just lovely, could've spent hours there!
However there were sights to be seen so our next stop was the Our Saviour's Church on the island of Christianshavn which has a magnificent tower and 400 steps to the top. So of course we had to climb that! It was steep. Not to bad inside the tower (bit tricky with people coming down) but the last section is outside the tower which winds around to the very top. It is very windy, the steps are slippery and there is but a rail between you and a very very big drop. Typical European country in that they feel if you go up there it's up to yourself to make sure you get down safe (if it was Oz or the US there would've wire and safety netting and big signs saying call lifeline). The view was absolutely incredible but looking down... (Kylie you would've cried). It was totally worth the hike up there but I don't need to go back in a hurry!
Once back on solid ground food was in order so we found a floating cafe on the canal where we partook in some excellent Danish food (Joy had the best salad of her life, I had an amazing sweet potato frittata and Nome had potato on bread -and you can't fail with that).
After that we cruised through the city checking out shops and ended up at the Kings Garden and lazed about in the sunshine (i.e. I had a nap). The King's Garden is home of Rosenborg castle one of the earlier Danish kings palaces. It had a moat.
After that was dinner in a pub where I sampled a local dark lager Rod Tuburg (Dad it was excellent I would recommend!) and then back to the hostel.
Once home we had a wee bit of a drama on finding out that Joy wasn't on our flight to Germany tomorrow having somehow booked a flight on the 28th of Jan not May. Ekkk! Luckily Naomi's lovely husband Ewan came to the rescue and organised for Joy to be on an earlier flight for a price that doesn't break the bank. So as I write this she's on her way (hopefully safely) to Berlin where we will join her later today!

A review of Australian Post International Sim card:
All 3 of us bought this travel sim prior to leaving Australia. They cost about $50 comes with $20 credit and claims to work in every country. Once you've bought it you need to go through a process of registering it and activating it which you can do either online or on your mobile. You need an unlocked handset. It also has an app where you can check your balance, change data settings, top up with credit and trouble shoot issues.
So how did we find them? In a word; rubbish! They are difficult to activate, it's not a straight forward process. I did mine online which was OK to begin with but once I'd logged out of my Australia post account and went to go back in, it wouldn't recognise my password and it takes a week for them to change your password (which still hasn't happened). This was OK because I could top up on the mobile app. Nome and I both activated ours in Australia before we left. Joy tried to but couldn't get it to work (inspite of having an unlocked iPhone - it is an older one, not sure it that was problem). She attempted to trouble shoot by updating her software, resetting to factory settings (turning on and off numerous times, taking out the sim constantly) but to no avail. So hers has never worked. The added complication is on her and Nome's phones (both iPhones) the app frequently and constantly crashes. The app does work on my Google nexus. My issue was if I took the travel sim out and put my old one back in, I had to reactivate it each time it went back in, this involved a text from the app and that cost me money (unimpressed). The next issue was although we could text each other in Europe we couldn't text internationally. At first we thought it was just adding the +61 to the phone numbers but we found out that you needed to delete every text that had the number in it otherwise it wouldn't register the +61. This wasn't a huge hindrance for me because my phone is fairly new but it meant Nome was wasting ages trying to delete all messages. She then managed to successfully text her mum and brother but no matter what she tried she couldn't text her husband (we even tried putting him under a fake name).
So the question remains do you even need an international sim?? With the advent of smart phones and free WiFi (at least in the northern European countries, I think you may have to pay in the south) you can use whatsapp, Viber and Skype to text and call home and it's free. I think it can be risky using roaming with your Australia sim (I've heard horror stories of bills of $1000s of dollars) but if you are savvy I think you can adjust your settings with your carrier so that doesn't happen.
Having said all that now that we've had to split up from Joy she borrowed Nome's phone so we can text her and find her in Berlin when we get there so that is one positive aspect of it.
We have successfully used it to call home but when we tried to call the airline in Berlin to sort the flight issues it failed completely. Again what is the point of it.
So to conclude I think perhaps you do need an international sim when you are going from country to country particularly in a group that might split up but I definitely wouldn't recommend to Australia post travel sim. So many companies provide free ones with travel insurance or with tours so I think that might be the way to go!

Just as an addit I'd saved this blog as a draft to post later when I've got WiFi and this morning while checking out of the hostel, the travel sim completely stopped working. Not great timing what with Joy in another country! 3X to authenticate it sim in and out repeatedly on and off repeatedly and then finally I figured how manually register it to the network. Ohhh good lord I hate this sim!