building in Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capitol and most populous city in Denmark. The language of the country is Danish, but most Danes also speak fluent English. Like other Scandinavian cities it tends toward the pricier of places to visit in Europe. Money is the Danish Kroner. Currently $1 USA is equal to 7.17 Danish Kroner. Because of that it looks like everything is way more expensive than it actually due to the prices posted. Weather is comfortable in the summer, with long cold wet winters. It snowed a bit while we were there in November. It’s a walkable city. Copenhagen has been given the title of the greenest city on earth and is heavily invested in renewable energy sources.
bike on the Inner Harbor Bridge
Bicycles are a popular form of transportation in the city. There are bicycle lanes alongside of the busier roads. There was also a separate bicycle lane from the walking lane on the Inner Harbor Bridge at Nyhaven, a popular tourist area of town with colorful buildings, lots of little cafés, and boat tours.
Rosenborg Castle
Copenhagen was first settled in the 11th century. It has been the capitol of Denmark since 1445. Denmark is located on a peninsula with a 42-mile land border with Germany and the rest of the country surrounded in water.
Cisternerne
Copenhagen has lots of tourist attractions with historical buildings, museums, gardens, castles, canals, and more. A cistern that once held water for the city has been transformed into an art museum, though I would find it more interesting for the cave-like stalactite formations than the art. Unfortunately when we went there it was a dark exhibit involving sound rather than sight so the cave formations were hard to see.
ice skaters at a Christmas market in Copenhagen
Architecture includes a lot of old buildings along with some modern ones. Public transportation includes trains as well as busses. There’s also a water taxi that is something like a bus except in the water. Bikes are available for rental. For tourists there’s also a hop on hop off bus as a way to get around to see a number of the tourist attractions.
merchandise in front of a shop
It appears that crime is not a big problem there. Large groups of private bikes are parked pretty much everywhere, some without locks indicating the owners don’t fear them being stolen. Even the ones with locks generally just have the lock around a wheel rather than attached to anything solid. Many of the little shops leave large assortments of merchandise on the sidewalk in front of their store with nobody out there watching over it.
There’s often more than what you see from the road. Little openings or archways lead into courtyards that sometimes have more businesses and others are the entry to parking areas or apartments.
little mermaid statue
We stayed in a hotel called Wakeup Copenhagen Borgergade. The last word is the street it is on, which is important since there is another hotel of the same name in a different area of the city. The other one was about half the distance from the airport. The one we were in was within walking distance of many things. Rosenborg Castle was the only obvious one on the tourist maps, but a whole lot of other things were also easy to walk to including the famous little mermaid statue, the winter palace, and Nyhaven so the location was quite convenient.
weird frosted glass bathroom
The hotel room was very tiny and the bathroom just had frosted glass around it. It’s a pretty awkward design lacking privacy. The hotel had a lot of nice seating areas on the ground floor where people hang out in the evenings, probably because the rooms are so small. It had a buffet breakfast, but for an additional cost. They had elderflower juice, which I had not heard of before. It’s pretty sweet, but good. The pastries are very soft and flaky. I’ve always heard European wheat is different – not GMO or full of chemicals so less likely to cause stomach issues.
St Alban’s Anglican Church
The hotel did not take luggage behind the desk for people who had some time to kill between check-out and a flight, but they did have a whole bunch of storage lockers in the basement. There were also some bathrooms down there which required a room key to get into, the accessible one of which contained an ironing board.
guard at the King’s Palace
If you have specific things you want to do it’s a good idea to know in advance not only what, where, and when, but also to have a plan as to how to get there. If you don’t have any concrete plans just walking around you may find all sorts of things to do. Wandering about from our hotel we passed by numerous museums that could have been visited had we so desired, and lots of old churches that are quite photogenic from the outside. The only one we checked whether or not people could go inside charged a fee.
segway tour passing through at the King’s Palace
We happened across the famous mermaid statue and then got to the king’s winter palace about half an hour ahead of noon when they had changing of the guard so we stuck around to watch it. While we were there several segway tours passed through.
Nyhaven
Later we made it to Nyhaven, where we enjoyed seeing the colorful houses along the canal and took a boat tour. There’s also a whole row of cafes along one side of the canal. One is in a boat. The Inner Harbor Bridge across the main waterway led to an outdoor skating rink and beer garden on the other side. We found another skating rink at a park near our hotel that had other stuff around getting set up for a Christmas Market. The Christmas Market wasn’t open yet, but the skating was.
cafe with indoor and outdoor seating
Pretty much all of the little cafes and coffee shops everywhere in the area had outdoor seating as well as seating inside. People actually sat out there in spite of the fact that it was literally freezing. As in ice on the ground and on our second day a bit of snow that fell the previous night.
windmill
Other things we saw in random wanderings included a windmill at a park with some trails and lots of photo-worthy architecture.
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