During the last week of my vacation, I went on a short trip to Copenhagen with my parents. Last semester, I took a Danish class at the university, but apart from the time that we drove through Denmark on our way to Sweden, I had never been to Denmark before. So I thought it was about time! I was surprised by how beautiful everything was: not just the big buildings, but also the houses in neighbourhoods that were a bit further away from the city centre.

We spent most of our time doing sightseeing: we went to see the statue of the Little Mermaid (from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, which I read in my Swedish literature class last year), walked around in Kastellet (a fortress near the Little Mermaid), took a look at Amalienborg (the residence of the Danish royal family), Christiansborg (also known as Borgen, which is the seat of the parliament and the Prime Minister’s office), climbed the Rundetaarn (a round tower from where you have a nice view over the city) and walked around in Christiania (a neighbourhood where some people started their own autonomous town in the 1970s). In today’s post, however, I’d like to share some other things that I really enjoyed in Copenhagen. I hope it’s useful!

Food

Atelier September
Gothersgade 30

On our first full day in Copenhagen, we had lunch at Atelier September. I had heard about this place in one of Anna Nooshin’s vlogs and it looked so good that I wanted to try it out myself. It had a beautiful interior, the staff was friendly, and most importantly: the food was good (and also super photogenic ;)). I tried out this smørrebrød (an open sandwich from dark rye bread) with avocado, which was delicious, and a cup of green tea, which I didn’t enjoy that much because I had the idea I was tasting the cup more than the tea (I think the glazing had worn of). But I would absolutely recommend this place!

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The Yogurt Shop
Grønnegade 37

Another tip from Anna was the Yogurt Shop. This is a place where you can assemble your own bowl of yoghurt. Even though I think this concept exists in lots of different cities, I had never tried it out so I was quite curious :) I chose regular yoghurt with caramel sauce and all different kinds of fruit. Yum!

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I also want to suggest two other places, but for some reason, I forgot to take pictures in there. The first one is Zirup (Læderstræde 32), a nice café/restaurant where we sat in the sidewalk café to have dinner. I had a really nice tomato soup with chili and ginger. The glasses of water we ordered were huge, which I really liked. Also, the staff was super friendly.

On our last evening in Copenhagen, we had dinner at Kate’s Joint (Blågårdsgade 12). It had a really cosy interior and there were lots of candles. They had lots of different kinds of food, I believe most of the things on the menu were Asian and Mediterranean. I chose tofu with fried vegetables and rice and it tasted good! Oh, and the staff was really friendly as well!

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Activities

Botanisk have
Øster Farimagsgade 2B

Visiting a botanical garden is always a good idea when you’re on a trip. Last year, I visited the botanical garden of Göteborg and I really liked it, so I thought it’d be nice to visit this one in Copenhagen. These pictures were taken in the Palm house, which is the largest greenhouse. Because the plants in there are used to a tropical climate, it’s quite hot in there, especially when you climb up the spiral-stairs. I thought it was a really beautiful building. Definitely worth a visit!

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Statens Museum for Kunst
Sølvgade 48-50

If you’re into art, you can visit the National Gallery of Denmark. They have lots of different permanent and temporary exhibitions, and the admission is free! I decided to only visit the exhibitions about Danish & Nordic art between 1750 and 1900 and Danish & international art after 1900. One of the things I liked the most were these paintings by Emil Nolde, a German expressionistic painter.

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Nationalmuseum
Ny Vestergade 10

I thought it would be nice to learn something about the Danish and Scandinavian history, so that’s why we decided to visit the National Museum. This museum has lots of different exhibitions, but I only visited three of them. The first one was about the Danish prehistory, which I thought was pretty nice. When I was learning Danish last semester, we read a text by Adam Oehlenschläger about these golden horns. They were fabricated in the Iron Age and found in 17th and 18th century, but in 1802, they were stolen by a goldsmith and melted down. Oehlenschläger wrote a poem about it in which he depicted the horns as a symbol for the glory of old times. The horns on the picture are replicas of the original horns. Besides that, I visited an exhibition about the Danish Middle Ages and Renaissance, but I didn’t think it was that interesting because I’m generally not very interested in that period. I also visited an exhibition called Stories of Denmark (1660-2000), which was nice because they had tried to make some kind of timeline with all the things that were important for that period, like what clothes the people wore, what their houses looked like, which important evolutions where happening in society, and so on. The presentation was a bit outdated, but it was still fun to watch.

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Theatre

My dad thought it would be nice to go to the theatre while we were there, but since my parents don’t speak Danish (and mine isn’t that fluent either), we thought it would be better to pick something with not too much dialog. So we went to see a performance called Horisonten (“The Horizon”), which was a mix of theatre, opera and dance. It took place at the Royal Danish Playhouse, a quite impressive building that was opened in 2008. It was a really nice experience, and I actually loved listening to the spoken parts, even though I didn’t understand everything.

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Transportation

Biking

Like in most big cities, you can take the underground, but besides that, biking is a great way of getting around in Copenhagen. We saw so many people biking on the streets (almost as much as in Amsterdam), and in most streets, there were good cycle tracks (and sometimes even separate traffic lights for bicycles). Another advantage of biking is that you can do some sightseeing while you’re on the go.

We decided to try out the city bikes, which are bicycles that you can find at docking stations all around the city and just leave at a different station if you want to. You just have to create an account on the website (or on the bike itself). We decided to go for the monthly subscription formula, where you pay 60 DKK for a month and when your bike trip is shorter than 30 minutes, it’s free. The bikes have an electric motor and the best thing, a GPS system, which is particularly useful when you don’t know the city that well.

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Accommodation

Urban Bed & Breakfast
Amagerbrogade 17

I just couldn’t write this post without including some pictures of the beautiful hostel where we were staying. The rooms are nice and spacious, there’s a small kitchen and I wish I could’ve taken the bathroom home with me because it was that beautiful (I mean, just look at that bath!). When I first came into the bathroom, I thought: “wow, this place smells exactly like my new shower gel from Rituals”, which was easily explained by the fact that there were scented sticks with the same scent (it’s called Hammam Delight and it’s soo good!). Strangely enough, it’s not actually a bed & breakfast, so you have to take care of your own breakfast, but there are many supermarkets around so that’s not really a problem. So if you’re going to Copenhagen and you’re still looking for a place to stay, this might be a nice idea. It’s not super close to the centre (about 2,5 kilometres away), but when you’re going by bike, it’s totally okay.

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So I hope you enjoyed reading about my week in Copenhagen. Feel free to leave your own tips in the comments! :)