Copenhagen

Because life is crazy and flights from London to the continent are: a. cheap and b. plentiful, Dawn and I decided to spend a whirlwind weekend drinking our way around Copenhagen in mid-October.

The city is notorious for its Scandinavian price tags and disgustingly beautiful people who are just so effing nice.  You want to hate them; they're gorgeous, their English is perfect, they pull off cable knit with aplomb.  But you cannot hate the Danish because they're just so freaking nice and their capital city is filled with beautiful, odd, quirky everything.  Case in point--street art:  

Even the public toilets have a certain charm

In places, it's kind of what you expect Denmark to be--lots of canals and colourful buildings.  I could imagine having drinks on canals in the summertime would be rather romantic.  Seeing as it's October with its requisite wind and rain, it doesn't work in quite the same way.  

                                                      

This in mind however, the Danish have a uniquely Scandinavian word to describe their inner warmth.  'Hygge', a word with no English equivalent, translates as 'creating a cosy, warm atmosphere by enjoying the good things in life with good people.

And warm and cozy it was

 On the downside, sandwiches are minuscule (and rather expensive).  But if I were to put two and two together, it may be that tiny sandwiches+big prices=skinny people.

Smørrebrød (A Danish open-faced sandwich--Danish lettering courtesy of the google search/copy and paste feature). Don't be deceived--in real time, this delicious concoction of rye bread, potatoes, radishes and mayo/cream cheese hybrid was a quarter of the size of an actual sandwich.  At £5 each, we ordered two and called it a day.

We then opted for drinks and wanderings in various trendy parts of Copenhagen including Vesterbro and Norrebro.  Bars and restaurants were plentiful and we started by getting lost attempting to find a trendy wine bar.  We ended in a pub full of sober and drunk Copenhagers (and a smattering of tourists).

Too much wine later, we stumbled home in preparation for our Sunday morning wanderings--a walk to see The Little Mermaid (definitely little) and the Royal Palace.  Some pictures of various views:  

 View from the top of Rundetarn (the Round Tower) 

 

The Royal Palace

 

Rosenborg Castle, I think.

In total, we only spent about 48 hours in the city which is not enough time, really.  We managed a boat ride and some walking between the drinking and eating but a weekend is never really long enough in a place.  Unless it's Helsinki in February, of course...