I feel like I’ve neglected my blog a little recently. Life has been hectic to say the least, but after a lovely weekend in Copenhagen, often referred to as ‘the happiest city in the world‘ I’m feeling refreshed and ready to crack on with the year ahead.
We decided to head out to Copenhagen for Georgie’s 21st birthday, as she has Danish friends from her time spent living in Tanzania, and so on Friday morning 5 of us set off from Southampton for Luton Airport and began the trip to Denmark.
I’d never visited Denmark before, but it has long been on the bucket list, and with good reason. It is beautiful, clean and friendly. The public transport was actually on time and there is a real mix of people.
We arrived on Friday night, dropped our bags at the hostel and headed to Georgie’s friend Bibi’s apartment for dinner and what turned into a few drinking games, accompanied by Danish (birthday) cake. Naturally…
Day One
On Saturday morning we had breakfast in our hostel before heading to Nyhavn, the 17th century harbour, full of cute little restaurants and bars, historical wooden ships and those instagram famous coloured houses.
Hans Christian Andersen famously lived here, writing a number of his fairy stories including The Princess & The Pea.
From Nyhavn, we took a canal boat tour of Copenhagen, seeing the Opera House, Palace, Little Mermaid, the naval base and the Black Diamond Library.
This is definitely worth doing as you get to see a lot more of the city, it’s a guided tour lasting around an hour and isn’t that expensive either at 80DKK (about £10) for an adult.
After the canal tour, we visited Paper Island, which used to be the home of the Danish Press. Now, Paper Island is home to galleries, the opera house and Copenhagen Street Food, an indoor market filled with pretty much every food you can imagine.
As well as this, on the way back to the hostel we walked past an art installation designed by Yoko Ono, a ‘Wishing Tree’ where people could write on tags of paper and tie them in to the tree branches.
I read a few of these, and took a couple of pictures to show you all, as they definitely give you food for thought.
After a packed day of walking (you can hire a bike if you want to but we wanted to have a wander) we arrived back at our hostel, got ready and headed for dinner at Madklubben, known as ‘the most visited restaurant in Denmark’. It was hands down one of the best meals I have ever had.
The restaurant can seat around 300 people, but they separate it in to a few different rooms, in order to make it a little cosier.
After dinner? We went out to celebrate Georgie’s birthday and started at Bremen Natbar. One thing to note if you’re heading out in Copenhagen is that a few of the clubs won’t let you in if you’re under 23 (they don’t want drunk 18 year olds spilling drinks and causing chaos, I imagine).
That being said, we had some 20/21 year olds with us and faced no issues, so I’m not sure how well they actually police these rules.
They also go out a lot later in Copenhagen, so we started our night at around 2300 and the last stragglers got in at 0530.
Day Two
After a well needed breakfast to cure our sore heads, we left the hostel and were confronted with a slightly rainy, dark Copenhagen and so went to look around the Glyptoteket Museum, an art museum filled with over 10,000 works of art and ‘the biggest collection of antiquities in 
Northern Europe‘. It’s around a 5 minute walk from the station and didn’t cost us anything to get in, but I think if you want to visit any of the special exhibitions then you need to pay.
The art collection is built around the personal collection of Carl Jacobsen, the son of the founder of Carlsberg.
Perhaps the most famous sight in Copenhagen was about a 10 minute walk from here, and whilst we knew it was a very small statue from the boat trip, I wanted to see the front aspect of it, so we went to find The Little Mermaid, based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.
We even walked past the head office for Maersk, so my inner shipping geek was impressed.
By this point, it had started to rain and so we went to seek refuge in a nearby coffee shop, before heading out for dinner again.
We went to a lovely little restaurant in another area of Copenhagen. Georgie’s friend described it as a ‘trashy restaurant‘ so we were all unsure what to expect.
It was better than 90% of restaurants in the UK so, unless the Danish have very different standards, I’d not describe it as trashy at all. Our meals were wonderful and again, fairly reasonably priced.
Day Three
We woke up on Monday, checked out of our hostel and went for brunch at one of the most famous spots in Copenhagen, Mad & Kaffe.
En route, we walked past a few building sites covered in graffiti. I feel as though graffiti wouldn’t be frowned upon quite as much over here if it was this colourful, and it definitely made the building site fences a little more pleasing on the eye!
Mad & Kaffe was well worth the visit. You could select 3, 5 or 7 options from the menu and they brought it out in individual dishes on a wooden board.
I’m not sure if brunch will ever be the same again.
Where to stay?
There are so many hotels and hostels in Copenhagen, but we stayed at Urban House (which just won the prize of best hostel in Copenhagen) and was around £20 a night. We had a lovely 6 bed room with private bathroom and I can’t fault the hostel at all. It’s also the most instagrammable place I’ve ever come across. It even has a tattoo shop inside. There were so many cosy little areas to go and chill and literally hundreds of rooms.
Definitely worth staying if you’re planning on visiting Copenhagen!
Getting to Copenhagen
All in all, it was a wonderful weekend away. There are a few places I’d like to see but we didn’t manage to get to in 2 days due to opening times etc… Tivoli, for example, is only open from April.
Kate being Kate would also like to visit Hamlet’s Castle, the naval museum and the round tower.
Still, it’s an excuse to return!
I will definitely be heading back to Copenhagen, it was just the most wonderful city
Have you visited Copenhagen? Would you like to?