Copenhagen, Denmark – Part 1

My friend Helen and I were looking for a European city break to celebrate our 50th birthdays this year. We looked at Florence, but it isn’t the easiest to travel to, from our home locations, so Copenhagen, Denmark was chosen. When we booked the flights’ times were great, we’d meet at Amsterdam airport and be on the same flight to/from Copenhagen. Well, best laid plans and all that…the schedule changed, changed, and changed again!

The changes meant that instead of having a half day in Copenhagen on the Monday we arrived in the evening and my flight home…well more about that later!

Train travel from Copenhagen airport to the city was quick and very easy. It was easy to buy our train tickets from the machines and not expensive. A few stops on the train and we were at Central Station. Hotel Mayfair is very close to the station, so an easy walk (if you go in the right direction, we took a wrong turn oops!).

We were in a twin room with a window looking out to an internal courtyard. The beds were VERY soft but very comfortable. It was lovely and clean, perfect location for everything we wanted to see and do and the breakfast buffet was brilliant.

At breakfast they had lots of organic items, your typical English breakfast type foods (even baked beans!), continental breakfast display of cheeses and meats, different breads and pastries, lots of fresh fruit options and yogurts. They also had a Le Creuset pot that was labelled “soft boiled eggs”, it seemed too good to be true! Soft boiled eggs sitting around, warm and not turning hard? Well they were cooked whites and very runny orange yolks you could dip soldiers in! I need to know their trick, anyway I’ve gone off on a tangent…back to the city.

We had a late meal at the Hard Rock Cafe, I know not very Dutch, but it was open and not too noisy and it was late.

On our first full day we bought a CitySightseeing (Hop On/Hop Off) bus ticket that included a boat tour and discounted entry into Tivoli Gardens. We did the full loop and the boat tour and still managed to walk more than 5 miles.

It seemed only the Classic Copenhagen Tour route was operating, but this is a great route and was interesting. You could dash off and see the Little Mermaid statue and then hop back on again before it departed, rather than being stuck there for ages waiting for the next bus. There is some beautiful architecture and some very interesting buildings and a mix of old and modern that has been very sympathetically done.

What you do notice from the bus is the number of bicycles in the city, tens of thousands! I think I saw more bicycles in Copenhagen than I did in Amsterdam! The cycle routes are the width of a carriageway here, rather than a skinny little afterthought painted line on the road. Most of the hotels around us had lots of bicycles that you could borrow/rent, including our own hotel, plus there were other bikes around the city that you could hire using an app. I don’t have a great track history with bicycles and prefer to walk or do the bus tours.

We had a look around some of the shops as well, such beautiful items in the Illums Bolighus shop. We had a look around the Royal Copenhagen Flagship Store (the place where they sell incredibly expensive hand painted pottery and crockery). We obviously had a look in a Lego shop or two.

We had a lovely dinner at C’Ho Fame, an Italian restaurant. Helen had a pizza and I had a delicious salad (salad leaves, rocket, buffalo mozzarella, pear, pistachios and balsamic glaze). I ordered some bread and followed it up with ice cream. Well we did nearly go to Florence, so I’m not beating myself up about the fact we went for an Italian meal in Denmark lol.

The next morning after our delicious breakfast (yep more boiled eggs for me!) we headed to the City Hall. At 11am (and 2pm) you can be escorted to the clock tower. After a million steps (okay 300 steps) we got to the top and the views were great. My heart rate was in peak for the first time in a loooong time! Anyway, we were glad we made it to the top and the views were great and we could see a lot of the city. We saw a number of wedding parties in the City Hall and it is obviously a popular place to get married.

Copenhagen actually sits on two islands, Zealand and Amager, just to the right of the peninsula that you think of as Denmark, there’s a bridge to Sweden not too far away and it is said you can see Malmö, Sweden from the clock tower, but in my exhaustion I forgot to look for it. Doh! If I go back to Copenhagen with my husband one day I may just climb those stairs again to see if I can spot it, we got married in Sweden.

We then headed to a yarn store, which I’ve talked about on my crafting blog, and passed this statue of Hans Christian Andersen on the way.

Once I’d bought some yarn we headed to Christiansborg Palace, but I’m going to finish this post here and will continue the adventure on my next blog post.

(This post contains lots of links, including a lot of the picture titles, to websites or Wikipedia pages if you want to know more.)