Copenhagen, Denmark – Part 2

If you missed Part 1 yesterday, please check that out here.

In my last post we were just making our way to Christiansborg Palace. When we bought our CitySightseeing tickets it came with a little booklet of vouchers. One of the vouchers gave 20% off the combo ticket which includes entry to:

• Royal Reception Rooms (including the Great Hall tapestries and a special exhibition)
• The Royal Kitchen
• The Ruins (under the palace)
• The Royal Stables

We would recommend this combo ticket and to visit all four, the ruins smell a bit musty but they had some displays of different mythical creatures which made up for the smell. I think that was just in the run up to Halloween though, but I would highly recommend October as a month to visit. Christiansborg Palace is one of the few working Royal palaces that you can visit, and the Queen of Denmark still hosts events there. Check ahead as it may be closed if there is a President, Prime Minster or other Royal Family visiting! We saw photographs of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip and Barack & Michelle Obama visiting the Palace among others.

After our visit to the Palace we headed to Tivoli Gardens. You have to pay to enter, but we had our discounted entry through our CitySightseeing combo ticket. Depending what time you go there can be large queues for buying tickets, so having one already is a bonus. Helen took much better photos than I did during the trip, but unfortunately they don’t seem to open on my computer, so you are stuck with mine! These are snaps taken on my mobile phone, gone are the days of me taking a proper camera around with me…I should probably reconsider that. For some reason in the gardens I’ve only photographed pumpkins! There are rollercoasters, rides, shops, restaurants, cafes and stalls…but apologies here’s some pumpkins!

We went on a rollercoaster! The last time we had been on one together was in 1991! I won’t be rushing to get back on one, I screamed the whole way and Helen laughed at my screaming. She took a photo of my photo from the ride…what a shame her photos won’t open on my computer 😉

If you read yesterday’s post you are probably waiting for me to tuck into a Danish meal! Well nope, we went into the Tivoli Food Hall and had a look around and decided on an Italian place! We were there pretty early so it wasn’t very busy. The food hall can be accessed from the street side as well, they stamp your hand to get back into the gardens. The restaurant is worth mentioning though as it really was a delicious dish I had. The place is called La Baracca and serves fresh pasta cooked al dente in front of you and you eat at the bar, the pesto one I had was really tasty. One of the owners is from Florence, where Helen and I were almost going to visit! We then headed back to the hotel and watched a movie. We walked 8 miles this day (5.3 miles the day before).

The next morning we were up for breakfast (more soft boiled eggs for me!). We hopped on the bus one last time, before our 48 hours ran out, and went to see the changing of the guard at Amalienborg Palace. It was chilly and its quite a long process and standing on the cobbles wasn’t great, we watched for quite a while though.

We then headed to Nyhavn area, there were some photos yesterday of this area taken from the boat tour. The house that Hans Christian Andersen was born (the red building on both photos) is along there and there are lots of pretty painted homes and restaurants with outside and inside dining.

Finally we tucked into some Danish Smørrebrød, at the SkipperKroen restaurant. We ordered the fish platter each and it was 4 small open sandwiches with fried breaded place, prawn & egg, marinated herring and a smoked salmon one. I wasn’t keen on the rye bread it comes on and skipped the herring. To be honest I’d had a Belgian waffle with hazelnut ice cream about 15 mins before we walked into the restaurant so I wasn’t terribly hungry!

Yesterday I posted a picture of a Lego version of this row of buildings.

We then wandered around clocking up more miles walked and had another look in some shops. I showed some photos of these landmarks yesterday, taken at a distance, so here’s some better close up ones as we walked by.

For dinner later on we tried the Tivoli food hall again but it was packed with people and extremely noisy, so we left and went to Café Vivaldi and both enjoyed tomato soup and bread there. The portions were ginormous, so we were glad we’d just ordered soup. We stopped at the train station to buy our tickets for the next morning and when we got back to the hotel we had clocked up 7.8 miles.

On the Friday morning my flight was at 6am! Because I was travelling sooooooo early the trains weren’t running but the Metro was. I was grateful our hotel was so close to the station, the Metro was very clean, well lit and easy to change. When we bought our tickets you could print your itinerary as well and that told you which underground station to change at. (The price was the same for the Metro and train.) I was sooo tired, after less than 5 hours sleep and chomped my way through a chocolate muffin, fruit smoothie, chocolate croissant and probably something else I’ve forgotten. I left so early I missed out on the delicious boiled eggs breakfast at the hotel.

I will leave you with one final Lego structure, this one was at the airport and is my favourite of all the ones I saw in Copenhagen. For some reason Americans add an ‘s’ to Lego when they talk about their Lego bricks or Lego sets. They are very clear there, it is only ever Lego and never Legos!

For sure I’d like to go back with my husband.