Copenhagen has been my favourite place we’ve visited. Of all the cities in Europe, this was my favourite. Sorry Amsterdam, Barcelona and Edinburgh (my other favourite cities), this was the best. Scandinavian countries always top the polls for the happiest places to live, and there is this thing called Hygge, which is lovely. I can’t put my finger on what was so great about it, but it just felt right. The people, the things to do and see, and happy I felt there. Hopefully this little blog will ensure more of you go and visit it, as you will not be disappointed!
Flew from Luton, which was vile! Road works and airport works and that. This was the kids first time on a plane, and they were fine about it! I’d planned what to do, where to go, how to get there etc well in advance. We stayed at my favourite AirBnB of them all, a lovely top floor apartment. Ha, top floor could be 2 storeys, or 16. It was on the fifth floor, which was the top. The apartment had been converted by the owners, a lovely family of 4. They had bought the flat next door and just knocked through. Here is a link to see it AirBnB. Room each for the kids, which they loved, perfect kitchen/eating area, living room with wooden floors and that. Hygge defo started from here.
I had bought a Copenhagen card for Char and I. This gave us 72 hours of unlimited transport, and free entry into loads of places, with a lot of them places we actually wanted to go to. Most European cities have similar schemes, but Copenhagen was the most extensive and worthwhile. The apartment was only a couple of mins walk to the metro, so easy to get to other places. We wanted to get the most out of our card, and the first place we went to was the zoo! On the way, we found a nice park with a nice sandpit and that. I can’t imagine there being a nice sandpit in the UK! Cat poo and bottles of 20/20 would be buried in ours! This one was alright. Got a bus to the zoo.
The Zoo
Really nice! Had polar bears, which were cool. Brown bears, tigers, you know, zoo animals and that. Was an ok sunny day. Kids had ice cream. I keep freestyling, like, not looking at my notebook! It wasn’t that busy there. Noisy bit were the bonobos, jeepers they carry on a bit! Loads of play bits, and sculptures and just a really nice day out.
Superkilen Park
I found this park on a picture search of Copenhagen. I saw these white lines on a hill, and thought it looked ace! Turns out it’s part of this urban park thing, with a cool name, summat that sounds like a wrestling move. Superkilen! It’s a park made up of three separate zones, like the Crystal Maze, but less mazy and crystaly. These are not words, but I’m keeping them in. If you look at it on Google Maps, the first bit you see is the red floor of one of the areas. This was full of swings, and circus type bits and pieces, and an exercise area. The next bit is the coolest bit, the hill with the lines. Have a look at the pic, as my words will not work here. There were other sculpture-type slides and that there too. There were bits of artwork and fountains from around the world, like an Iraqi fountain, and a phone box. The last bit was green, fields and that. While we were in the white line hill zone, I saw a women get knocked off her bike by a car, which wasn’t great. She was fine. It’s hard being a nurse in a foreign language! Imagine being knocked over, and a funny little man gives your arm a reassuring squeeze and does a quick ABC whilst sounding like ‘flergen deurgen pepsi max’ or whatever.
The Little Mermaid
Next day, we went to see Den Lille Havfrue. As we got there and took a few pics, a bus load of American tourists turned up, and swarmed the place. My favourite bit was ‘Well jeez, that’s another one ticked off the bucket list’ *high fives wife*, ‘Let’s get back on the bus, Susan’. Anti-climactic if you ask me. Quite small, and not mermaid looking enough. On the way to the fishy lady, we saw an old fort thing, Kastellet. It was on a 5 pointed star mound, which is quite popular in Europe as a means of defence, along with a moat around it all.
The Round Tower
One of the coolest buildings in Copenhagen, is The Round Tower. A tall tower, which is round. Inside, it’s just a continuous spiral to get to the top, but there’s no stairs. It’s just a flat spiral, which you plod up to the top. Best bit about it was, the reason it was built like that was, some bloke who used to own Copenhagen, wanted to take his horse up to the top of a tower, just to show him what it was like up there! Bonkers.
Nyhaven
This is the picture postcard harbour, that is one of the iconic Copenhagen pics you see, with all the pretty, different coloured buildings. It was alright I suppose. We have a similar thing in Llandeilo. We ate pizza in a place called Batman. True story.
One of my favourite finds was just around the corner from here, and we went to it for two reasons. 1 – It was an art gallery called Charlottenberg, and 2 – we had free entry with the Copenhagen card. The exhibition that was on was called ‘Take Me (I’m Yours), and it was amazing. It was loads of different artists, some proper, some just graduated, and the best thing was, you could take stuff! The different art pieces were either made up of the things you could take, or there was something that you could take as part of the message. Little magnets, mirrors, bits of cloth representing women’s rights and that. A good one was a little photo booth, but you had to leave the pictures on the wall to make another art installation. There was a swap shop bit – take something, leave something. There was also a massive pile of clothes, like massive. Taller than me, and that’s saying something! It represented refugees apparently. I picked Amelia up and threw her right in there! Really enjoyed it, and was a nice intro to ‘art’ for the kids that wasn’t just pictures on the wall. Speaking of art, I was once pen pals with Tracy Emin. She wrote last, and I forgot to reply. That was 8 years ago now!
Tivoli Gardens
This place is an amusement park, but well old. We saw it on Richard Ayoade’s Travel Man on Channel 4. There were rollercoasters that were well old, and loads of new stuff too. The rides were quite expensive though. It was part of Copenhagen Card, again, but had to pay extra for the rides, like tickets and that. Kids were too small for a lot of them, so that was good. I wanted it to be better than it was. Really popular and busy, but the cost of rides made it a bit of a shame.
We went to the Hans Christian Anderson museum, so you don’t have to! Do not go, unless you REALLY love him. It was free (Copenhagen card). Next door was Rilpley’s, go there instead.
The World Cup was on while we were there. England lost against Iceland, and the guys in the flat below really enjoyed that game!
Oh, we also saw the changing o the guard at Ameliasberg. Char got told off for leaning on a wall.
On the last day in Copenhagen, we went to The Blue Planet, a massive aquarium, again, part of the card. It had fish and that in.
We went there as it was on the way to our next destination. A train over a massive bridge to Sweden! It was ‘the’ bridge in the Scandinoir TV show of the same name, The Bridge. Oresund bridge is 5 miles long. You can also drive over it too. We ended up in Malmo, which is exactly where we booked a hotel for the night, so that was handy. Not much to see there mind. Imagine going to Leamington Spa, or Milton Keynes for the evening. Saw some music statues, where I saved Stan’s life by catching his head with my foot when he fell off, hurtling towards the cobble stones. Saw a cool building called Turning Torso, which is a block of flats, that looks like it’s twisting his abdomen. Walked around a park called Kungsparken, nice green bits, a park, and some blinking Windmills! Next day, headed back over the bridge to the airport, and flew home.
Copenhagen was ace, Malmo less so. Did it to tick another country off. We will go to Stockholm at some point! I would happily go back to Denmark, thank you for being lovely!
I’ve only just noticed what the sheep are doing!!! ?