Compact, environmentally-conscious, unquestionably charming and so incredibly cool, 48 hours was all it took for me to set my heart on Copenhagen as my spiritual home. The trip was a surprise birthday gift from Tom earlier in the summer, and he'd enlisted the help of my girl @rulew (who's made it her mission to visit at least once a year) to make sure we saw the prettiest streets, drank the best coffee and ate the tastiest kanelbullar around. Little did I know that she'd be standing in the hostel lobby waiting for us once we'd settled into our room - all orchestrated by her and Tom months earlier - giving us our own personal guide for the next two days!
We only really scratched the surface of this impeccably designed and incredibly efficient city, but these were some of my favourite spots from the two days we spent there:
I could lose days of my life wandering up and down this street with its Instagram-friendly shop fronts and window displays. Unlucky for us, we only made it there on the Sunday when a lot of the shops were shut but Ru assures me - with an Instagram feed full of photographic proof to back her up - that they usually bring all of their products outside and set them up on the pavements, bringing this busy little street to life.
We stopped in briefly at the famous Meyers Bageri for what I was promised was the best cinnamon bun in the city – it didn't disappoint – before heading to The Coffee Collective for a flat white. After that, we made our way to Grød, a cafe that solely serves sweet and savoury porridge (I topped mine with salted almonds, fresh apples and dulce de leche, and their recipe book is at the top of my to-buy list), then onto the sprawling flea market that had popped up at the end of the street. The upside of visiting on a Sunday.
Possibly the most iconic view of Copenhagen and one you'll see on postcards everywhere, and with good reason. The quays are lined with quaint and colourful fairytale houses, canal-side bars and market stalls, and of course, the prettiest sailing boats I've ever seen.
Hell for somebody as indecisive as I am but absolute heaven on earth for somebody who likes to eat like I do. I could spend days wandering and eating my way around this high-end market, and could have filled suitcases with all of the fresh produce on offer there. We started with asian baguettes for us and the boys went Brazillian, then we visited Coffee Collective and Laura's Bakery for coffee and kanelsnegle. We visited again over the weekend, once for hot dogs (unlike any hot dog I've ever had before) and once to stock up on a stash of ginger chews from the Japanese street food stall for the journey home.
The Natural History Museum's Botanical Garden
We stumbled upon these gardens by accident on our way to Tivoli Gardens but it actually became one of my favourite spots in the city. The garden has 27 glasshouses - most notably the central Palm House with its cast iron spiral staircases, narrow tree-top walkways and garden views so gorgeous that you'll quickly forget that you're in the centre of a capital city.
I was so keen to make it to this tiny one-room hotel before we left, purely because I'd seen a photo of it years ago when I first signed up to Pinterest, but sadly thought we'd run out of time. We were wandering back to the hostel after waving Ru and Jack off on the metro to the airport and I realised we were nowhere near where we supposed to be, but rather Tom had taken us across town to seek out this tiny little beauty in the creative and up-and-coming Vesterbro...and there was a car parked smack bang in front of it.
We nipped in here for a quick breakfast before we left for the airport, and it was worth it for the interiors alone. I was disappointed that its famous avocado on rye was only on the lunch menu but our soft boiled eggs and comté with rye, and the prettiest vase full of cosmos next to our table, more than made up for it.
The details:
We stayed at Sleep in Heaven, a lively and vibrant hostel in (the obscenely stylish) Nørrebro, full of mildly intimidating European twenty-somethings making the most of the daily happy hour. We opted for a private room which would have been great had a group of guys not decided to have races down the corridor at 2am. If you're willing to take that risk, it's definitely worth it - and with a ten minute walk to the closest metro station, it couldn't be in a better location.
Being completely flat and built around waterways, this compact little city is easy enough to get around by foot, but we also paid roughly 200DK (£26-ish) each for 72 hours of unlimited travel by train, tram or bus; which we had almost covered the cost of in our journeys to and from the airport alone. I read somewhere that it's unlikely that you'd ever wait longer than four minutes for a tram during the day, and no more than fifteen or so at night - personally, the longest we waited was a minute and a half, making the metro the easiest way to get about. Unless you do as Copengahers do, and find yourself a bike.
We were warned that a trip to Copenhagen is nigh on impossible to do on a budget but we found that having prepared ourselves for London prices, or prices you'd find in any capital, we were pleasantly surprised.
On my list for next time:
The Rundetaarn, with its whitewashed spiral walkway and 17th century observatory; Tivoli Gardens with its vintage Victorian fairground, preferably by night, even better if it's at Christmas; Meyers Deli and Granola for breakfast; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Hay House, and PlayType for endless design inspiration; the harbours to swim in the summertime; and back to Jægersborggade to visit Kaktus, Keramiker Inge Vincents and all those other little shops I was sad to see were closed.
I may or may not have been pricing up flights to go back again soon but keep getting distracted by Stockholm, Dubrovnik, Lisbon, Hamburg, Bruges and Paris. Which is your favourite European city? Where should we go next?
{The kind folk at Fujifilm lent me an X-A3 to take with me, which might just be my new favourite travel partner.}
