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Copenhagen 48 hours
30th April 2016
Project: Yellow Scarf
This is by far the cheapest flight (there’s a reason for that it seems!) we have ever booked. Back in January we made plans to visit a few cities over bank holiday weekends. We got a great Bargain on most of the flights as we booked them well in advanced and also from smaller airports (Top Tip). We managed to get the flights for around £20 for a return. So it may have been very cheap to get here but Copenhagen is one the most expensive yet amazing cities ever ever been to, well worth it!
Don’t you recognise me? Yes we had the sex? – Saga, The bridge
That might make sense to a few of you, or it may just sound batty. I can confirm that Saga is a bit batty, sexy but
with some perfectly Swedish Asperger’s issues. If you don’t know what I’m rambling on about then I’m talking about the Danish & Swedish thriller detective TV series called The Bridge. This would be the main inspiration for our trip. We had recently started watching the show and just thought it looked like an amazing place to go and also thought it was be super cool to make the journey across the goliath bridge structure to Sweden.
We had done a good bit of research before coming, and had watched a few other fellow Travel vloggers including the Vagabrothers videos of their visits, this allowed us to get the best inspiration and information on the town, food, sights and more importantly beer!
We left Edinburgh on time and had a smooth flight, wheels down around 9.30 pm, the password control queue was pretty long. It took quite a while to get through but but we had been talking to a few people who were also staying in our hotel we had similar interests in vlogging and blogging and decided we would get a taxi together.
We shuffled and shuffled, the line was slow but finally it was our turn. The border control guard who served us was the personification of everything you would from a expect Scandinavian; tall, blond, beautiful and smiley, she takes our passports and welcomes us warmly “Welcome to Denmark” we hand over our passports, I slowly look to the left an see that they are stamping passports. I give out a small whimper of excitement and its written all over my face – I’m about to get a new stamp! I calm myself. She hands the passports back and I sigh and bow my head. Then I hear it, the unforgettable punch & click of the stamp machine, franking my passport, I look up and she is laughing…… I love this country already.
We flag a taxi with our new companions and make our way to the hotel which is the new Tivoli Conference Centre, it’s only been open a few months, and the smell of fresh paint is still in the air. It’s already quite late so we decide to unpack quickly and then make our way out for some beers. There’s slight issues about unpacking when you are trying to start a travel vlog channel there’s quite a lot of stuff to sort out. As you can see.
Gear sorted and now to hit a local bar or two in the meat packing district
That’s right I said meat packing…. So something akin to a scene from Robocop, the meatpacking district in Copenhagen is now the new in and cool place to go and drink. Micro breweries and “New Nordic cuisine” restaurants nestled away between cash and carries and meat processing plants and abattoirs. It’s very strange but it somehow works and works really well.
Our top bar to go to here was Warpigs, a fantastic partner owned (and are always looking for new investments) micro brewery and restaurant that does lots and lots of uniquely brewed in house IPAs & beers. They also have some very funny names, our choice was “fuk-hoff”. Get here early as it gets really busy and noisy, great vibes.
Other notable mentions in this area for food are Mother who do fantastic sour dough pizzas and Burger Joes. A rough guide for a bottle or glass (they don’t do pints but it’s still pretty big) of beer is between £5 – £7 , So watch your money! Food is generally about £12 – £18 for a meal, Fast food burgers are £8 Pounds and crepes are about £5, it does work out a bit more expensive than at home, but the quality of the produce is superior. If you come just think of everything like London prices. Another few ales are downed and we hit the hay. A cool day ahead tomorrow, starting off with a visit to a Victorian theme park.
We wake up and it’s glorious, the sun is scorching so we hit Tivoli Park which is Europe’s oldest theme park. This was the place that Walt Disney would discover inspiration for his life’s work and set in motion the development of the Disney theme parks and company that we now know and love. This place is truly like a fairy tale, you will instantly feel like a big kid again. Coconut shys and shooting stalls litter the entrance, so many prizes to be won. The full park has a steam punk inspired style to it. There are 2 or 3 old fashioned roller coasters lots and lots of other different rides, it’s a big place. The entrance fee £22 for an all inclusive unlimited ride pass or you can simply pay £4 – £8 pay as you go per ride. We only went on the Runaway train ride that was built in 1940, it’s still as rickety as it was when it was built and you can hear and feel the age of the track, the clackity click sound of the old cars really adds to the atmosphere. We lucked out again as there was also a music festival taking place in the park this weekend, every single part of the park was full of music. School bands, orchestras, choirs the place was truly magical and the rides well they were just SOOO MUCH FUN! You have to come here, I implore you to add this place to your bucket list. Spectacular fun.
After Tivoli we went back across the road to the main train station terminal to get some quick fast food.
We found the danish equivalent to McDonalds and though yeah this looks really good ordered, paid with contactless, sat and waited in the queue and then it hit us! We just paid £20 for two small burger meals.. mucho expensivo! They were damn tasty though.
After finishing and savouring every last bit of our food we hit the train information centre and found out how to get to Sweden tomorrow. It works out at £10 each way to cross the bridge to Malmö, that’s the same price as our flight! While here it’s probably best if we grab some metro tickets, they are about £1.50 – £2 so transport here appears to be quite cheap.
We found ourselves now wandering aimlessly through the town, it was a music festival weekend so every square and corner was alive with sound and moment. We followed the main street and aimed for the Round Tower (Rundetaarn). The tower is an old observatory that has a winding ramp instead of steps to get to the top of it. We made our way up after paying a few pounds to get in (25DKK) and then took in the panoramic views of the city. The walk is quite strenuous and quite dizzy but pretty cool to see the skyline; we exit the building and think about heading for food and then clear as day breaking through the backgrond noise we hear the phrase:
MA FEET ARE GOUPING
The most Scottish phrase I’ve heard all trip, and it wasn’t from one of us.
Apparently there was a massive cruise ship leaving from the port and it was full of a large consistency of Scottish patrons, we exchanged some banter and swapped advice about bars and places to eat. I love meeting older Scottish people on holiday they are always really polite and love a chat. We took their advice and hit the Studenterhuset and had a few beers before heading out along the river towards Nyhavn.
We chilled out here and get some cheap street food, polish chilli hot dogs and then we tried to figure out how to get to the giant street food place over at Paper Island, unfortunately we failed completely as the ferry to it doesn’t run at the weekend…. yeah that didn’t make sense to us either.
Remember: WE FAIL SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO, Take the metro at the weekend, It’s being upgrade at the min so there will be a lot more metro stations soon.
We had an other early night as we were up early to hit Sweden tomorrow, we ended up watching a Danish travel vlogger on the tv late into the night it was amazing to see him visit places we had been to in NYC and be as surprised and as affected by the place as us.
You can read our Sweden blog when it’s finished, after we got home from Sweden we had two other ports of call – Christiania and Papirøen (Paper island) for some amazing street food.
We headed to the famous hippy commune area of Christiania, passing by the massive spiral Church of Our Saviour that you can climb. We decided against it as we were running out of time so headed towards the infamous pusher street and this is
Where this blog becomes a bit serious. Also please heid my warning with this.
Pusher street and the area around it is an old army base that in the 70’s set up a commune where lawful sales much like in Amsterdam of Hash and Marijuana and other substances. It was allowed back its heyday, this has since been stopped yet there still exists a street where you can go and by hash, I’ve no idea why or how this place functions or how the police allow still allow it.
Be aware DO NOT TAKE ANY PHOTOS once you are through the gates, none at all you will be confronted, have your camera taken off you and who knows what could happen.
J was lining up a shot of some graffiti when a hooded man grabbed our camera and demanded
“BOY, WHAT ARE YOU TAKIN PHOTOS OF ME FOR?”
A) We were in an area where it is apparently ok to take photos and B) he wasn’t even in the shot and the shutter hadn’t even dropped before the camera was in his hands dragging J by the neck. We showed him everything we had taken, he wasn’t on it and he stormed off giving me a strong menacing yet paranoid warning. We instantly put EVERYTHING away, headed to the exit which unfortunately meant continuing on through pusher street.
SO lessons learned?: the hippy plateau of love and trust in the 70s had now changed to masked men in large groups paranoidly watching and following you around, we felt unsafe and very not at home, we were much happier when we were back out in the open. If that’s your kinda tourism go to somewhere like Amsterdam or just travel carefully, don’t push your luck.
So after all that sh**e! we went for a well deserved pint and some food at Papirøen Island. We hopped the metro, got to the place and as soon as you opened the door, the sheer noise and smell of campfire just hit you full on like a truck!
This is the polar opposite of the last place! Finally we felt at home, this is a safe place, street
food and beer time, and what a choice! We got a pint and walked around at least 5 times,before getting a second pint and some Korean street food.
This place catered for everyone’s taste, Greek, Italian, Polish, Burgers, British, Mexican, French, Korean, Indian….. a bit of everything and it all primary went for the magical price of 8 DDK (about £8)
The sun is still glorious, and we attack the bar one last time and sit outside on the dock of the bay watching sleepy Copenhagen wind down for the weekend.
We head back to the hotel and take the express VIP elevator to the the 12th floor skybar cocktail lounge and for a nightcap. Its becomes apparent from a couple that we met that the Danish aren’t big fans on late night meals, its hard to get a meal past 10 unless you go to a more younger hipster place like Mother which is open late and always busy! We were looking forward to trying there tomorrow!
We wake up on the last day and make a list of the things we hadn’t seen or done yet; The Carlsberg Brewery Museum, a boat trip, and that damn stupid bloody Little Mermaid. Yeeeeaah, so as from the tone, apparently its a must see but in all honesty we didn’t have any interest of seeing it as it was really far away and not very big, we figured out that we could do possibly a boat trip that would encompass all of that and get us home in time for Pizza at Mother.
Fun fact! In Denmark you can only buy alcohol between 10am and 8pm in the shops, on the first night we struggled to find a place on time and ended up buying a few to many cheap bottles of wine that we never got round to drinking, We didn’t want to waste them, the maid had been really good with us so we left them to her (as well as a tip) hope it went down well.
Our flight leaves later on tonight so we check out the hotel and leave our cases in the luggage room, head out on foot. We make a quick stop at Tommi’s Burger Joint and get some amazing burgers for breakfast then on to our favourite – Warpigs. We get 2 pints of some limited edition beers then and notice some fellow Scottish beer aficionados. As we are about to leave I notice that one of them has an amazing RAF coat, as you’ll have seen from most of our winter travel J loves a big coat, usually black. So J asks him.
I love your coat where did yo get it from? a conversation blurs past and he hands us a beer. WHAT! This legend has just given us a rare limited edition launch beer for brew dog… for nadda!
This is one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met! A huge Dr Who fan and beer aficionado. It turns out he’s the head of the student union for Strathclyde Uni and he’s here on an educational helping out with Copenhagen student union. I love Glaswegians, they will give you the world for nothing and I look forward to buying Prez back a beer one day in Brewdog in Glasgow. You sir are a legend, and we salute you.
We hightail it toward the Carlsberg building that’s miles away in the distance, always with the walking! our feet are starting to take a bit of a pounding by now but the walk is worth it. The museum entrance comes with two free beers and a guided tour with “Entertainment”. We see half of the place and have our first beer.
DING DONG!
There’s a massive ringing of a bell. We turn round and there standing in a white lab coat, safety glasses with a smoking silver conical flask is Denmark’s answer to Hestin Blumental
Who wants to make beer flavored ice cream?
Well that was a no brainer. J quickly snaps his GoPro out and starts filming, the mad scientist begins mixing a chemical bond of beer, milk ,sugar and liquid nitrogen, once done he hands out plastic spoons to the small crowd and the masses tuck in! And they are aggressive with this, especially the Russians, they are in there first, wildly stabbing frantically at the bowl like it like it was the black watch commander, it’s like almost like they have a point to prove and honestly it great to sit back and watch the polite Danish people awkwardly yet always politely interact with them.
We finish the brewery tour and head back on the free bus that leaves directly from our hotel, which no one told us about, a small failure but our day wouldn’t have started at Warpigs if we’d known and Prez wouldn’t have entered our lives, sliding doors etc. The bus is fully loaded with loud Americans and its not the greatest 10 minute of our lives!
We reach the hotel and its nearly time to get “on a boat” ah it makes me chuckle every time I love that song but not so much the little mermaid…
The boat trip is a really nice and gentle meander through Copenhagen’s Canals, there are the occasional interruptions by the over protective and paranoid boat captain, shouting ARMS IN THE BOAT! or WATCH YOUR HEADS. This was probably because some numpty in a lonely island T-shirt kept trying to take selfies to fuel an on going in joke that he’s had between his friends for years! Imagine being that guy?
But all in all, it was very relaxing. We got to see some of the sights including a submarine (a cool museum we didn’t know about) some of the castles and royal families house, and eventually the underwhelming Little Mermaid. We bobbed along for an hour or so and unwound before getting back to dry land for a last minute dash to get to mother for that sweet sweet pizza we dreamed about……..
Alas, it was not to be. Gutted! The place was queued out the door and we only had 2 hours to get to the airport. Next time.
We arrive at the airport in plenty of time, get some duty free and scope out somewhere to eat. We see a pizza place, circle around it a few times but everything else is shut and we figure what the hell.
MIND BLOWN, this is the best and thinnest pizza we have every tasted. It was so thin and crispy that we ordered another one, it was cheap as well from a place called “Gorm’s”. I hope they come to the UK at some point.
Flight arrives on time and it’s a smooth flight home another fantastic Gallus Gallivant,
Go Paint the clouds tartan
Jaimsley Signing off
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