While my mum was visiting me in Germany we decided to take a trip up north for a week which included a couple of days in Copenhagen, followed by a couple of days in Hamburg, two cities that I had never been to before. Our Copenhagen trip was such a wonderful three days full of festive fun, excessive amounts of gløgg, and lots of pretty architecture and I wanted to document it all right here. DAY 1 We arrived at 4pm, just as the sun was setting and went straight from the train station to check into our hotel - City Hotel Nebo - just around the corner. After taking our luggage up to our quaint but lovely room, we set off to have a look around Copenhagen. I was surprised to see that the town centre is quite close to the train station yet Copenhagen just seemed to be so spacious in comparison to most other European capital cities that I've visited. In fact, the whole layout of Copenhagen was just perfect and everything we hoped to see was within walking distance from our hotel. We walked around aimlessly for a couple of hours appreciating the beautiful Danish architecture and every so often popping in to yet another Christmas market. Eventually we stumbled upon Tivoli. It looks so marvellous all lit up in the evening that I didn't even care if we didn't end up finding time to go inside (but we did… more on that later). After a couple of hours of aimlessly wandering around we finally decided on a place to eat, Wagamamas! We had a very delicious meal, which ended up being a lot more expensive than anticipated and then headed on back to the hotel to watch a Christmas movie. Not only do you have to get accustomed to a different currency in Denmark, you also have to learn to accept that you're going to pay a lot more for a cup of coffee here than you're probably used to.
We had worked up a hunger through our wandering and opted for a Danish delicacy for lunch, delicious Danish hot dogs with the works! The hot dog gave us a boost of energy that led to our decision to take a second walking tour. This time the tour was around an island just off central Copenhagen called Christianshavn. The tour gave us a further insight into the early days of Copenhagen's existence but my favourite part was learning about Christiania. After our tour we took a peek at Christiania which is an old military base turned hippy commune that has been fully constructed by the community living there. It reminded me so much of childhood days building tree houses out of bits and bobs found in the garden and I was absolutely fascinated by their creativity, though it's possible that the illicit fumes in that area could have been getting to my head a little. For dinner we went across to another island, called Paperøen (Paper Island), for dinner. On Paper Island was a big warehouse containing multiple shipping containers which had been converted into mini restaurants and street food stands. Each stand offered different cuisines and we ended up deciding on a Mexican meal of marinated beef, salsa, corn and roast potatoes. Unfortunately, I believe the street food warehouse is temporarily closed down, though I do hope it reopens soon because the meal was absolutely delicious and the whole vibe there was unreal! To finish off a wonderful day we walked back home through the beautiful Nyhavn Christmas market which was extremely hyggelig. At the end of the Christmas market stands Hotel D'Angleterre which won all of the Christmas decoration awards in my opinion for its Hans Christian Anderson inspired advent calendar. Each day in the lead up to Christmas a new window was revealed depicting a Hans Christian Anderson story such as 'The Emperor's New Clothes' or 'The Princess and the Pea'. Combine the fairytale element with Christmas music and a delicious cup of Baileys Hot Chocolate and you've got yourself possibly the most festive experience ever. DAY 3
Our final day in Copenhagen was overcast but despite the rain we walked to the opposite side of central Copenhagen to watch the changing of the guard at Amaelienburg castle. Unfortunately Australians aren't automatically invited for tea with crown princess, and fellow Aussie, Mary (weird?) so we paid a visit to the Danish Design Museum instead to escape the rain. I love everything to do with design so a trip to this museum was definitely on my to-do list and the bad weather made for the perfect day to spend a couple of hours indoors. Thankfully, by the afternoon the weather had cleared up and a trip to Tivoli was in order. Tivoli is the world's second oldest amusement park and contains different areas modelled to represent different cultures. Tivoli at Christmastime was magical and we spent over an hour just walking around, marvelling at how fantastical everything around the park was. We had another very festive time drinking gløgg and Baileys hot chocolate and just before heading home we tried Biksemad which is a Danish dish that contains: beef, potato, onion and beetroot. It was a great last taste of Denmark and the whole evening was the perfect way to end a really memorable couple of days.
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