Copenhagen - Denmark

We decided when our friend Mel told us she was leaving we needed to have one last travelling horary. Mel had mentioned that she was planning to go to Copenhagen so we informed her we would be coming. We arrived in Copenhagen mid morning after an early flight. We headed straight to the HI hostel, only to find out that there are two in the city, and we were at the wrong one! We arrived at the big one that we were actually staying at, but the rooms weren’t ready. We went for a walk around town, which is when we realised, damn, its cold!
Were staying quite close to Tivoli Gardens which we thought would be quite nice. What we didn’t realise was it is actually a theme park (like Luna Park), and it is closed for the cooler months. We looked at shops and tried to find somewhere to eat, finally settling on an international restaurant. Copenhagen is famous for two things, a mermaid statue (which we found out is currently in China) and Europe’s longest pedestrian shopping street. We spent the afternoon wandering past the shops before returning to the hostel for an early night. Luckily Copenhagen has a few Australian Pubs. Not normally of much interest to us, but given the Grand Final replay being on, we had to find one at 7am. A few beers, a disappointing game and a mid morning nap and we were ready to once again hit the streets of Copenhagen.
We headed to the Copenhagen Design Museum. It had displays on the design history of Denmark. Everything from chairs and furniture to cups, telephones and cars. It was good, and the girls really loved it.
We love travelling with Mel. Not only does she have the art background similar to Christine, but her motivation for visiting galleries and museums is amazing. She also is a coffee fiend, so once again we headed to a cafe for coffee and cakes. The rest of the day was lazily spent and another quiet night.
Sunday was a bit of a sleep in before we got up and got moving. Mel had a big day planned. We took the train out of Copenhagen to the Aarken Art Gallery. It is a contemporary art gallery and we all really enjoyed it. It had a whole room with works by Damien Hirst, one of Christines favourites. There was interesting mirror spiral pieces you could walk through and a light and water installation. There was also an exhibition of a guys works who had heaps of paintings of jungle scenes that are a bit cartoonish, very cool!
Next we took another train over to another town, Roskilde. This was a quiet little place. The main attraction was the Viking Museum which we had a look around. Its actually on a bay so a lot of the boats are in the water. There are also some ruins of original Viking ships stored inside the museum. We walked through a nice park and had a quick look at the big church in town before heading back to the train station. Exhausted (again), had a bottle of wine and chilled at the hostel for the evening.
Monday morning we were up early for another big day, a day trip to Sweeden! Back on to the train, over a big bridge to Malmo. We really liked Malmo, the sun was out which helped, but it was a very nice place. We wandered through another nice park on our way to the modern area of town, with its Twisted Torso, high rise building. This was a very cool building, by the water, with a view of the big bridge we had taken the train across in the morning. On the way back to the old town we visited the little huts that are the fish market and the old castle (not the most impressive castle we have seen), converted into a museum.
The old town in Malmo had some big squares, shopping streets and nice old buildings. We had a look at the shops, sculptures in the street and buildings. Next the girls wanted to go to the Chocolate museum, which turned out to be a bit disappointing. It was basically just a shop, with a bit of old chocolate stuff, and a few little samples. We then hurried back to the train to get back to Copenhagen.
Tonight we headed out to ‘Norrebro Bryghus’ a local smallish brewery. We had organised to meet Daniel, he lives in Copenhagen, we met snowboarding last year. The three of us started sharing the beer sampler, a glass of each of the 9 beers on tap. We had a few more of our favourite beers, served by a friendly local who is soon moving to Melbourne! When the bar closed Daniel took us to a cocktail bar and then another pub. We had a great night, stumbling home in the wee hours of the morning, we had a bit of fun with the bike counter. We found a bike lane that had a counter, and a screen showing how many bikes have ridden past that day. We might have been there a while, but by jumping on the sensor, we tripled the number of ‘bikes’ that had ridden past!
After a few hours sleep we had to be up to check out. After some breakfast we hit the streets again. We walked along the river bank and the through the Christianshavn district. It has a church with amazing gold spire and nice buildings along canals. We chilled on a couch in a cafe for a while before heading back into the old town. We had Danish sausages for lunch, Mel had been craving a fat sausage. A bit more shopping and then we hit one more gallery. Finally we headed back to the airport for our flight back to London.
Thanks Mel for a great trip to Copenhagen. But mostly thanks again for being such a good friend, you have enhanced our time in London. I know you will enjoy being back in Sunny BrisVegas, but you will also be missed over here. Hope to see you back in Aus soon!