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Interesting facts: (This helps me put things in perspective, it might help you too!)
- Denmark population: about 5.7 million people
- Copenhagen population: about 600, 000
- Location: Southwest of Sweden (it's actually attached to Sweden by a bridge) and south of Norway. Its only land border is with Germany at Denmark's southern border.
- Denmark is made up of 443 islands. The total area is about 43,000 square km. (To put that in perspective, Vancouver Island where we live, is about 31,000 square km)
- Health care and education is free for Danish Citizens, including post secondary education. Students in college also receive $1000 per month from the government as a living allowance. (Of course citizens pay for this through taxes.)
I forgot how exciting it is to go somewhere new. There is nothing better than that feeling when you head out on your first morning and start seeing all kinds of things you've never seen before! This is why you need to travel 😊
Our journey to Copenhagen was pretty uneventful. We flew from Malta to Munich… had a six hour stopover… and then flew from Munich to Copenhagen.
When you arrive you have a couple of choices to get from the airport to the centre of town. We opted to take a taxi for a few reasons.
A) We were tired (I have to take motion sickness tablets when I fly, which tend to make me very sleepy and unable to process my thoughts properly… it does however stop me from getting motion sick on the plane which I’m sure all my fellow travellers are happy about!)
B) It’s complicated to take public transport in a city you don’t know and in a language you don’t speak.
C) I’m just a princess and prefer to take taxis. (Although Steve says real princesses ride in carriages... HMPH!)
So… if you want advice on how to take the metro or the bus into town… you won’t find it here! I can tell you about the taxis though.
We thought we would need the Danish currency to pay the taxi driver. DKK is about 20/1 with the Canadian dollar. So 20 DKK is about 1 dollar Canadian. We went to the bank machine beside the place where you pick up your luggage.
WARNING: They charge you a $9.95 service fee!!!! I’m not sure if there are better places to get money in the airport if you need it, but I’d certainly look into that if I went again.
Turns out we didn’t need to use the bank machine at the airport because the taxis take credit cards or Euros. So if you are taking a taxi, wait until you get to town to go to the bank… I’m assuming it isn’t 9.95 to use the bank machines in town!
The taxi was between 250 and 300 DKK to the city centre. He also gave us the option to pay in Euros (which was definitely more when you converted it). Credit card is probably the way to go if you haven’t got cash yet. I actually got an initial bad feeling in Copenhagen after the cash machine charge and the taxi driver (I can’t lift your bags... I have a bad back... I don’t speak any English so can’t answer any questions... and pay me in Euros). This turns out to be not characteristic of Copenhagen at all. Our next day in Copenhagen was excellent!
We were slightly sticker shocked at the prices of things having just come from Malta where everything was very affordable, so were quite surprised to pay equivalent of 60$ Canadian for a 20 minute taxi ride to the centre.
Our hotel was quite nice, but our room was small. It did have everything we needed, but didn’t have much room to move around.
We stayed at the Hotel Twenty Seven, which was well located in the centre. Our room was very expensive. Almost $300 a night Canadian. I thought this was quite a bit for such a small room… but honestly I did a lot of research and it was the best deal I could find for what we wanted in the location we wanted. (Side note: a taxi driver told us it was fashion week, so that may have increased the prices!) The hotel did include a nice buffet breakfast which was a real perk because food is also expensive in Copenhagen!
We enjoyed our tea after breakfast in the lovely courtyard of the hotel where we found our favourite relaxing chair. I don’t even know what the word would be for a chair like this! Does anyone know???
When we finished breakfast it started raining. Apparently this is not unusual for Copenhagen, but it felt unusual (and maybe even refreshing) to us as we had just spent three weeks in sunny Malta!
After the rain, we headed out for our walk. I had a general idea of where I wanted to end up (Nyhavn to take a canal tour), but we just walked and looked at stuff along the way… which is our favourite thing to do in a new city.
We both think Copenhagen is beautiful, clean (Hee hee, maybe because of all the rain!) and feels very safe.
There were LOTS of people riding their bikes in the designated bike lanes (which were so much better planned than the ones in Victoria where we live), and people just seemed to be generally happy. (Interesting tidbit: In multiple surveys Denmark has been reported to have the happiest people in the world... so my impression is sort of backed by science!)
There was a lot of space dedicated for bicycles to be parked. We also noticed a lot parked along the buildings. Initially we thought they weren't locked, but then we looked closer and there is a little device attached to the back wheel to lock it up. That being said it must still be a relatively safe city because people trust that someone isn't going to pick up their bike and walk away!
We saw this cool playground as we were walking. Nobody was playing today, but Steve said when he went out to find us a pizza last night tons of kids were playing here!
We admired many buildings as we walked, and checked out the cafes on the edge of the river. It was our intention to make our way back for a drink later to sit in the lounge chairs at the side of the river… but we never quite made it back. Next time I guess :)
Did you know Lego was invented in Denmark? We passed a very cool place for kids. It was a giant Lego pit! I loved the idea of kids in there just building whatever they wanted. It just feels so much better for them then the trend of having sets that tell you exactly how to build your project. Let them use their imaginations. Anyway… I wanted to go play in the Lego pit… but then I remembered I was 50 years old and not five years old and kept walking :)
When we finally made our way to Nyhavn we took the obligatory tourist photos just like everyone else because it is a beautiful area!
Then we stopped for a little Danish treat. A waffle with ice cream and marshmallow cream. I think the marshmallow cream was Steve’s brilliant idea, perhaps not a traditional Danish treat. It was delicious :)
After the canal tour we stopped for a hot dog… which was a direct order from Jacqui who we work with. The hot dogs were delicious as promised :)
Next, Steve tried a little treat called a Flodeboller. We aren't really sure what it was, but it tasted like coconut, marshmallows and sugar. A pretty good mix!
Side note: I just looked it up and it says: Flødeboller, poorly translated as “cream balls” are actually a confectionary with a wafer or marzipan base, a marshmallow/meringue/sugary body and a layer of chocolate covering the whole thing.
Next we walked down some side streets toward the royal palaces. We saw a few interesting things as we walked.
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| This building was just pretty 😀 |
So eventually we got to the royal palace area which is called Amelianborg Palace. It appeared to be four identical buildings facing towards each other. Only one of them had the flag up… inquiring minds want to know...who was in residence?
As I was waiting for Steve to take photos (if you’ve ever travelled with us you know this is a lengthy process) I was just wandering around looking at stuff. Apparently I wasn’t paying close attention because the guard came up behind me and startled me by stamping his feet I think, as he made his turn to go back and guard the other way.
After this we wandered down to the Marble Church. You can visit the church for free, or pay a small fee if you would like to walk up to the dome to see the view.
We went home for a little rest of the feet and then wandered again in the evening.
This time we crossed over the river to Christianhavn and had a look around there. We walked through some lovely areas, and to be honest some sketchy areas to try to find the church we had seem from the canal cruise that afternoon. We ended up finding the church, but of course it was all locked up because it was night time.
Here are a few of the pictures Steve took in the evening in Christianhavn.
Afterwards we had a late dinner in a restaurant close to our hotel and headed home to sleep.
The next morning we enjoyed another lovely breakfast out in the courtyard of our hotel and then headed to our cruise ship. This time we had a wonderful taxi driver who talked to us about Copenhagen and his family, and was a generally a very nice guy. This was much more pleasant than our ride into town, and left us with a happy feeling about Copenhagen.
On our first day on board we just explored the ship and relaxed. The ship we were on is called the Norwegian Getaway and is very similar to a ship we sailed on to the Caribbean before with our friends.
This cruise is all about the ports, and was quite expensive, so we only booked an inside room this time. The room is fine… but small… I do miss having access to fresh air and a balcony though. That being said a balcony was going to cost us $2000 more… so we decided we could make do with an inside cabin this time.
One note about a place we really liked on this cruise. The “Syd Norman Pour House”. This was a classic rock venue that had awesome bands playing live music each evening. Here’s a shot of me breaking the rules in this room ;)
Thinking about breaking the rule...
Celebrating breaking the rule!
Well that was our time in Copenhagen, next stop Warnemunde, Germany!
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