Copenhagen, Denmark (1 Day Itinerary)

Welcome to Day 1 of my trip to Denmark, Germany and Austria. As I said in my Introductory Blog to this trip, traveled by Scandinavian Airlines nonstop from Washington DC to Copenhagen, Denmark for almost exactly $1,000/per person. After flying all night on this mediocre airline (less than stellar airline food, terrible quality in-flight personal entertainment devices, poor movie choices, uncomfortable seats, etc) and getting very little sleep due to chatty children, we landed in Copenhagen around 6:50AM, about 25 mins ahead of schedule. 

On this trip, I broke my own packing rules. Have you read my blog on What to Pack, and How to Pack It? I am usually very anti-checked baggage, but since we were driving ourselves around for the majority of the trip, and because we had to pack clothes for different varieties of weather, we each wound up checking a bag. Though keep in mind, we still had to fit all of the luggage for four people within 1 car trunk, so our checked bags were still small. 

Getting our checked bags and going through customs took no time at all. We barely waited in the customs line for 10 minutes. They asked us no questions and then stamped our passports. In choosing a hotel in Copenhagen, I also broke my own travel rules. In my blog on Picking a Foreign Hotel, I explain that I keep all foreign hotels under $200/night. Copenhagen hotels are expensive, and since we only spent one day in the city, we agreed to pay a little bit more for a few important conveniences. 1. We didn't pick up our rental car until the next day, so we had to rely on public transportation to get around Copenhagen. 2. We needed to get from the airport to the hotel, so a hotel shuttle was key. We selected the Crown Plaza Copenhagen for our stay. We paid $214/night, and it was worth every penny. You can read the specifics in my Trip Advisor Review, but some of the highlights included the airport shuttle, being able to by metro tickets right at guest services, and the fact that we booked our hotel through hotels.com and had no issues.

We called for the airport shuttle and were at the hotel by 8AM. Check-in wasn't until 3pm, and we were prepared to ask them to store our bags (as we've done all over Europe and Asia). To our delight, they had rooms ready so we were able to check-in early and get cleaned up before heading into the city. We bought train tickets at guest services and walked about 10 minutes to the train station.

Unfortunately, as soon as we got on the metro bound for Christianhavn (pronounced Christian-han) the arriving metro car decided to have a malfunctioning door. This delayed us by about an hour, but we were still in the city by about 10-10:30. We rode the train for about 5-6 stops before getting into downtown Copenhagen.

We first walk to the Church of our Savior which has an exterior copper staircase that you can climb to the top. The stairs inside are incredibly narrow and steep through the church’s bell tower. The views of Copenhagen were beautiful. In my picture below you can see how the top is spiraled. The stairs are initially inside (and it was very stuffy, but amazing to see the giant bells of the bell tower), and then a door takes you outside for the rest of the way. Sadly, there is no "top", the stairs keep going until they're too narrow to continue. You get there, and are like, "wait, is that it? ok, back down,  I guess." It's very anticlimactic, but we enjoyed it very much. And for $7.00/pp, we thought it was a worth while activity.

Church of Our Savior - Christianhavn, Copenhagen

Next, we walked to the famous, colorful canal street Nyhavn (pronounced Ny-how-n). 

Nyhavn, Copenhagen

From there, my husband and I split off from my in-laws and we each went off on our own. My in-laws took an hour long boat ride through the canals and went to the Royal Danish pottery store while my husband and I set off walking all over the place. Copenhagen can be a very walkable city if you're in good shape and if the weather is nice. Copenhagen is a quirky city, but we enjoyed it very much.

We started out walking to the famous Little Mermaid statue which took us about an hour to walk to from Nyhavn (about 2-3 miles). En route we did a little souvenir shopping at the House of Amber and got Danish hot dogs at a street vendor. Visiting the statue is pretty neat. There are tons of tourists around, and to get a picture with the statue, you have to push your way to the front.  You have to cross a series of stones and a bit of water to get to the statue itself, but then you can get that iconic picture with Hans Christen Anderson's famous oceanic lady. The statue is at the far tip of the city, so we walked to that first, and then made our way back through the city to the other sites. (A quick note: if you take the boat tour through the canals, you only get to see the back side of the Little Mermaid statue.)

Little Mermaid Statue - Copenhagen

After the statue, we walked through the star-shaped fort, got ice cream, saw a wounded bird and made our way to the Rosenberg Castle by walking through a nice park. We walked through Rosenberg Castle, saw the Danish Crown jewels and then walked to the Danish National museum lamenting the heat and lack of A/C in this whole country. Being so far north, Denmark is generally mild throughout the whole year, but on this particular day in August, temperatures soared into the 80s, and I regretted my decision to wear capris. 

Rosenberg Castle -  Copenhagen

For dinner, we got pulled chicken and cheese sandwiches at a corner sandwich shop, found chocolate chip scones (not very tasty) walked back to the train and called it a night. We really enjoyed our day in Copenhagen, though neither of us cared very much for the food that we ate. This would be an ugly recurring theme at the end of the trip as well when we spent 2 additional days in Denmark. Danish food, not so great.

The jet lag hit us hard after dinner, and we happily went back to the hotel instead of going to Tivoli. Apparently we were both very tired because we were in bed by 7:30 and slept until 6:30 - an hour later than we intended…oops. The next morning, we packed up, and headed to Germany. Day 1 of our three country European tour is complete. To continue reading, click HERE. 

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler