Copenhagen: Hashtag Thighs to the Skies

July 5th - Early Travel Day

We had a super early flight to Copenhagen from Brussels and it turned out it was from the further of two airports (one of those, I say I'm in the city you're in, but really you have to go to the next major town over to get there, kind of airports). So we reserved a car to bring us there that would pick us up at 4am. We arrived in Copenhagen around 9am and got settled in our Airbnb. Since we arrived so early on our travel day, that meant we essentially had 4 full days to spend in Copenhagen. We contemplated how we would get around and considered a transit pass, but those usually come in 3 day or 7 day increments so 3 days would leave us with a day without our pass and 7 is just too much. Since we wanted to live like the locals do, we ended up renting bikes for 4 days through a service called Donkey Republic which brought us all the way up through our last morning in Copenhagen.

We stopped by a coffee shop and pizza place before grabbing our rental bikes (which were parked right across the street from our Airbnb) and headed to the train station. We needed to get our reservation situated for our train to Stockholm, so we decided to knock this out first thing. There was an extremely long line, so we got to enjoy the wonderful Copenhagen central station for a good hour or so. After this we decided we were ready for dinner. It was pretty early for dinner, but we had been awake for so many hours at this point that we didn't really care. We found a Texas barbecue place, WarPigs, recommended by our Airbnb host and Will enjoyed some tasty meat (or so I've been told). I got by on some sides and we both got some good beer. WarPigs is a partnership between two breweries, 3 Floyds from Indiana and Mikkeller from Copenhagen, so their beer was very tasty. After filling ourselves up, we headed in for the night. We were exhausted from our early travel day.

July 6th - Touristy Sites

We made some breakfast, stocked up on groceries, and headed to the famous Little Mermaid statue. It was a beautiful day, so after grabbing our necessary pictures, we sat by the sparkling water for a bit before heading to our next site. We biked toward our second tourist attraction, but found a cool fountain, church, and yummy Nutella crepe on our way. We finally arrived at Nyhavn, which is the famous, touristy canal with restaurants, colorful buildings, and lots of sailboats along the water. We took some photos here as well and started looking for somewhere to grab lunch. The restaurants along the canal were all pretty pricey, so we hit one of the side streets and found a small sandwich shop, Chill-ee, run by a woman who handmade all of her bread. We both had delicious sandwiches before returning to our bikes to make our way back to a church we had past earlier, Frederiks Kirke. It was architecturally interesting since the building was a circle so everything was built to fit into a circle shape on the inside. We made our way across the street to Amalienborg Palace where we found a big open square with a cool statue in the center. There were guards around the square that were pacing around their stands while we were there.

The Little Mermaid

Nyhavn

Frederiks Kirke

Amalienborg Palace with Frederiks Kirke in the background

The palace was right along side the water, so we walked our bikes over to the edge of the water and sat there for a while taking in the sun, water, good weather, and good views. There was a really cute coffee cart that we bought some coffee from while we sat by the water. There were a ton of these small coffee carts all over the city; Copenhagen has an amazing variety of street food of all different types.

From our spot on the water, we could see another pier where people were relaxing. Sidenote: Copenhagen is all about their outdoor spaces. There were so many really cool parks, playgrounds, bike paths, etc. We walked out to the pier where there were little boxes with sand or grass in them where you could lay out or play in the sand to get a beachy vibe. We sat there for a little as well before making our way the rest of the way across the water to a food market made up of tons of different food carts in a big warehouse-type building. We weren't exactly hungry and everything was pretty expensive, so we just settled for a couple drinks from a craft beer stand, BRAW. They had amazing names for their beer. I got A Beer With No Name and Will had Illuminati Confirmed. After finishing our drinks, we made our way home to make dinner that we had planned.

After dinner we went to check out a cool park and the Mikkeller and Friends bar (Mikkeller is a big craft brewer in Copenhagen, we saw they everywhere). The park we visited is called Superkilen and is a super long urban park, stretched between several blocks with different activities/structures/whatever donated or funded by different municipalities throughout the world. We only saw a fraction of it, but it looked like a really cool place to hang out (another good example of Copenhagen outdoors spaces). After running around the park a bit, we biked over to Mikkeller. We sampled a few beers and called it a night.

Superkilen Park

July 7th - Gardens and Castles

We started our day at the Botanical Garden. Wandering through the flowers, we watched a couple big birds fighting and enjoyed seeing everyone walking their dogs through the garden. We opted to skip the indoor part since it was comfortably warm outside and we figured it would be pretty hot inside.

Botanical Garden

Next, we made our way to Rosenborg Castle. It was actually a pretty small castle as far as castles go, so we explored the large garden around the castle rather than paying to go inside. There were nice paths through trees and a rose garden with trellises arcing overhead.

Rosenborg Castle

Gardens at Roseborg

We started thinking about lunch and decided to find a place to get some good authentic Danish hot dogs. This is apparently something you should get while in Denmark and was recommended by our Airbnb host, so we found a stand called Døp where we could get a veggie dog for me and rode our bikes that way. There are a lot of pedestrian roads in Copenhagen on top of the amazing bike paths everywhere. We found ourselves on one of those roads and had to walk the last little bit to the food cart we were aiming for since the road was so packed with people. There were lots of options for topping combinations for the hot dogs, but we both opted for the traditional toppings: ketchup, mustard, remoulade (an aioli-type sauce), fried onions, fresh onions, and pickles. They were delicious.

We happened to be right at the base of the Round Tower, which was our next stop. The tower was built as an astronomical observatory. It has different exhibits on different floors, but we mainly wanted to get to the top to see the view. The way up was a long winding ramp up the tower which was fun for taking photos.

Round Tower

Climbing the Round Tower

View from the top of the Round Tower

Next, we went to Christiansborg Palace. We snapped a few photos and found a cool courtyard with a fountain to sit in for a little to take a break. We were in need of coffee, so we found a place nearby called Cub where we could grab a cup. Something we had started to notice by this point was that a lot of cool places in the city were built in the basements of the buildings so that you entered by walking down stairs right from the sidewalk. We hung out in the coffee shop while we drank our coffee then went back to the pier we had visited the day before.

Christiansborg Palace

Coffee from CUB

I didn't mention before, but the pier with the grass and sand boxes also had a section filled with all sorts of fun games and toys that anyone in the public could use. They were all set out and tons of people were hanging out and playing and there was music played over loudspeakers and nearby stands to buy coffee, drinks, snacks, etc. There were a good number of kids, but lots of adults as well. We spent a while playing with the different toys and games before heading home for dinner.

                

 

July 8th - Carlsberg

We started our last day by visiting the old Carlsberg brewery. We thought about doing the tour, but since it isn't a working brewery anymore (their new production brewery is down the road) and the price was a bit high, we opted to just hang out and try some beer. The old buildings and the nearby horse stables made it a pretty cool place to hang out. We stayed outside for a little bit before going into the Jacobsen Brewhouse and Bar which served the beers brewed under the Jacobsen name, but still owned by Carlsberg. It was also a nice place to spend some time surrounded by the brewing equipment used for the Jacobsen brand while also feeling like an upscale bar.

        

Horse stables at Carlsberg

Beer in Jacobsen's Brewhouse

We planned to go check out the library since I had read that it was a cool place to see. We didn't do much there, but we arrived right before it started raining pretty hard, so we waited out the rain with a coffee in the library cafe. Once the rain stopped, we got a couple more Døp hot dogs (yum), and tried going to visit the Church of Our Saviour. Unfortunately, we couldn't get in since there were emergency crews there dealing with someone who was sitting way up on the tall spire of the building. We stayed to see them talk the person into coming down with them, which we were glad to see, but we weren't sure how long it would take before they would be open again, so we decided not to wait.

We ventured to another Mikkeller bar to close the day and taste some more of their beer. After, we went home for dinner before settling in for the night. We packed up and prepared to head out the next morning.

July 9th - Train to Stockholm

We had to catch our first train of three to Stockholm around 9:45, so we made sure to wake up early enough to get to the train station in time. It turns out we gave ourselves plenty of time, so we took one last bike ride toward the water before turning in our bikes. It was a bit longer of a ride than we thought, but it was still nice to get to see the water one more time and get one more ride in before we left. On our way to Stockholm, we took the underwater bridge between Copenhagen and Malmö which I was overly excited about. We only have one more day on our train pass to get us to Oslo after Stockholm. I'm going to miss all our train travel once we start flying so much.

Our last view of the water before leaving