Copenhagen, Denmark

Copenhagen was one for the books. We started off staying the night in Malpensa airport in Milan. Worst sleep of my life, to say the least. 6am finally came and we went through security to board our 8:30am flight to Denmark.

We arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark on Wednesday morning having the whole day ahead of us which was nice.

Our stay was at the Sleep in Heaven hostel, which was so cute! It had a bar, lounge area that had a lofty look to it. It was one of the nicest hostels that we have stayed in so far. 

Our first plan of action was to rent bikes and ride around the city. It was around 50 degrees and very sunny, this made for perfect biking weather.

Being hungry, we stopped at La Galette, a French crepe restaurant. I got a caramel crepe and added some banana slices on it. Delicious!

We rode around the town a bit more and stubbled across the round tower, which was pretty cool. 

On our way to a park we also hear a band coming down the street. It ended up being the changing of the guards which occurs twice a day. It was such a nice surprise! 

We headed over to Kastellet, which is a fortress where the famous Little Mermaid statue is located.

The park was such a cool place. It used to be a military base so it is basically a piece of land surrounded by water. From a birds eye view it looks like a five-pointed star. We locked up our bikes and went for a walk around the area. We passed a super cool windmill and stopped to eat a snack.

Next we passed the St. Alban's Anglican church which had this amazing stone work exterior. Then we went past an elaborate fountain that was unfortunately not on yet. It was pretty to look at. 

Copenhagen being a port city, we quickly stubbled upon the Baltic sea. The water was so blue! There was a ton of fun statues along the sea that we stopped at to checkout.

We finally made it to the Little Mermaid statue. It was so cool to see how far the story, that Hans Christian Anderson wrote, went, now that it has been made into such a successful Disney movie and even a statue dedicated to it.

Our next stop was to Christianhagn which is a place in Copenhagen that was established by a group of hippies back in the 70’s. They claim that it is a separate country, but as of now they are still apart of Copenhagen. There was a church that had a very cool spiraled tower.

We also stopped in Nyhaven which is a well known dock filled with restaureants, canal tours and tourist. We grabbed s waffle cone ice cream from Vaffelbageren. It as such a nice change from gelato, and a perfect afternoon snack. I got caramel and coffee flavors with whipped cream on top.

On our way back we were riding our bikes along the highway and realized how serious the bikers were in Copenhagen. They stop for no one. Fortunately, we made it back to the hostel alive. We did take some tourist-y stops for some breathtaking pictures along a bridge.

We checked into our room and ended up having a 6 person room all to the three of us! We relaxed a little bit and then headed out for dinner.

If you don’t know, Copenhagen is and VERY VERY expensive city. Being a college student on a very tight budget, we had no desire to spend over 20 bucks on dinner, so we ended up at a fast food type place and got burgers and fries. It wasn’t half bad, and did the trick.

The next day we went catch a free tour of the city. Our tour guide was Stephen and was from Australia (just like Ashley, our Prague tour guide). He brought us around to:

^ Town square

^ Nyhaven

I stopped to get a peanut butter crepe .. unbelievably delicious

^ Hans Christian Anderson's house

^ Some old bikes that were thrown into the canal from bike thieves.. how sad!

^ We saw the changing of the guards again too!

^ We stopped by the opera house from across the canal

^ The Denmark flag was everywhere! They are very patriotic

^ We then stopped where the Royal family lives, there were guards that have to stand in the property for 12 hours at a time.. could you imagine? But it is one of the highest honors for Denmark.

We passed by Tivoli Garden which is a huge theme park in Copenhagen, the second biggest in Denmark!

It was nice to learn a little history of Copenhagen. Afterwards we stopped in the National Museum of Denmark which had a wide variety of exhibits. My favorite was the toy exhibit which had toys on display from the past 70 years or so. It brought back a lot of memories, well at least the toys from the past decade...

We headed back to get some food and decided to stock up on some groceries and eat at the hostel. We to a ton of food for cheap (a nice change to what we had the day before). It was quite a feast. We played cards and just relaxed at the hostel since we had an early flight the next morning. I made sure to grab a bagel to have for the flight home the next day too J

The next morning I was on my own with the flight. Kristen and Jordyn were heading to Berlin for the weekend and I was heading back to Verona since my brothers Marty and David were coming to visit me for the weekend! My traveling was a huge mess, unfortunately.  The flight was totally fine, but once I got to Milan, I found out that the trains were on strike and I was not able to get back to Verona until 5:30 – five hours later than expected! There was a lot of waiting, but I finally made it back and had never been happier to be at the apartment.